Did you play computer video games when you were younger?

In a recent survey of thousands of poker players it appears that there is a definite link between the fact that they now play poker and in their younger days played video games on the computer. This applies not only to online poker players but also those that play regularly live or in tournaments and we are talking about more than 75% of respondents who demonstrated the link. What the survey does not point out is why this might be the case or indeed which video games the top poker players played as youngsters. This last piece of information might have been useful. It does however suggest that the link is more applicable to men than women but that could be due to the fact that there are far more men playing poker than ladies (not necessarily better). Without seeing the full details of the survey we also wonder if age group has anything to do with it; after all, most young people these days play video games on their computer and playing poker is a fairly new phenomenon outside the United States. Put these two facts together and you end up with a conclusion that the older generation (we are not going to define that!) were much less likely to have been exposed to Poker and were much less likely to have been exposed to computer video games and you therefore end up with a link between those that do both. For this reason we are not convinced.

What is sure however is that with the growth of online gambling researchers are continually trying to find what drives the behaviour; we think it is simply people having fun but we are probably too simple.