Research Shows Poker Face May Not Be Effective

At the poker table, players usually try to hide their motives by keeping a blank expression – better known as a poker face. While conventional wisdom says that a poker face helps a player avoid giving off tells, some new research suggests that if you really want to get your opponent to fold, you might want to be a little friendlier.

The study, performed by Dr. Erik Schlicht (a visiting researcher at Wellesley College), used Texas Hold’em as a way to see how people made decisions while under pressure. They had the subjects of the study play hold’em against a computer that also displayed facial expressions on screen while playing. When the computer raised, it could show one of any number of facial expressions. Players were only given the option to call or fold.

What Schlicht found was that players were much more likely to fold when the computer showed them a welcoming face, rather than trying to give away nothing at all.

“What we found was that they thought longer when the computer screen showed a trustworthy face, and that they were more likely to fold," Schlicht said.

Schlicht’s research, which has been featured in Scientific American and many major newspapers, also showed what the least effective face was when attempting to illicit a fold. Surprisingly, it was the classic poker face.

Of course, if one always tried to get calls by using a poker face, and induce folding by being friendly, human opponents would quickly pick up on that pattern. But the real goal of the study wasn’t to create better poker players; it was about finding out how people analyze risks and make decisions. Schlicht said that while many such studies had been done through simulated lotteries or other wagers, he felt that a more familiar and everyday experience like poker might produce results that were applicable in practice, rather than in the abstract.

"People are very poor at weighing risks in the heat of the moment,” Schlicht said, “but they're very good at fine motor control and reading expressions.”