Question of the Day - 11 August 2017

We searched high and low and maybe we just missed something along the way, but we couldn’t find any studies on the relationship between alcohol and gambling strategy.

We did come up with an evaluation of the “Effects of Alcohol and Initial Gambling Outcomes on Within-Session Gambling Behavior,” reprinted by PubMedCentral under the auspices of the National Center for Biotechnology Information from a study published in the Journal of Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology. 

The study administered a relatively small dose of pure ethanol, slightly less than one standard drink, to participants and found that alcohol consumption was associated with larger average bets and more rapid loss of all available funds. The researchers also reviewed other studies and reported strong positive associations between the total amount of alcohol consumed and both total amount spent within a single gambling session and self-reported impaired control over gambling.

In addition, despite their demonstrable association, “… relatively little research has been conducted on the co-occurrence of alcohol use and gambling, with even fewer studies evaluating the impact of alcohol on gambling behavior.” 

Of course, it’s well-known that the vast majority of gamblers will have greater control over themselves and their decisions if they don't drink while they play. It's no accident, or fit of irrational generosity, that alcohol flows free and freely in casinos. On the other hand, many recreational players find the whole gambling experience to be more pleasurable when they're also getting the free drinks and a buzz on. But what about serious players?

Most experts who play for profit shun drinking while they play. That's most. Others can blend the two very smoothly, especially in the "big-player" scenario, where a player walks up to a game in the middle of a shoe and is signaled by a confederate what to bet. The big player often drinks while he plays, as it goes with his role of looking like a typical piker.

Still, this is an experiment that anyone, especially a beer-drinking pro, can easily conduct for him or herself. Sit down with a video poker computer tutorial. Play away for a while and get a baseline of your accuracy while sober. Then drink a beer, play, and see if your accuracy goes down. Now drink a second beer. Now a third. Now a fourth.

We’d bet dollars to donuts that the accuracy of most people’s strategy plummets as blood alcohol rises.