Leon Hess Business School professors Robert H. Scott, Ph.D., Arthur and Dorothy Greenbaum/Robert Ferguson/NJAR Endowed Chair in Real Estate Policy, and Mikhail Sher, Ph.D., recently co-authored a paper, “In the Money: An Analysis of Monetary Value of Chips and Player Outcomes in No Limit Texas Hold’em Poker Tournaments,” published in the Journal of Gambling Business and Economics (Vol. 17, No. 1, 2024).
The paper analyzes changes in player rank outcomes based on chip stacks and prior-day rankings using data from 25 World Series of Poker Circuit no-limit Texas Hold’em high-stakes multiday tournaments comprised of 17,852 entries. The authors concluded that players that progress to the final table have 50% more chips than the average stack after day one, while players that finish “out of the money” have around half of day one’s average stack. Additionally, the authors evaluate the Independent Chip Model (ICM) and compare the model’s predictions to the empirical results of the tournament data, finding the numbers to be mostly consistent especially in relation to players with shorter chip stacks.
The paper was co-authored with Michael Thomas Paz, assistant professor in the Department of Quantitative Business Studies at Purdue University Northwest. Learn more about the research.