What is it about online poker that makes us want to play it to the point of needing to play it? It’s not the money. It can’t be the money. If it were, the sensible majority of us would long ago have turned to more reliable revenue streams like insurance fraud or selling the contents of our closets on eBay. It may be the sense of community. Or, it might just be a matter of competition. Winning is a rush, this we know.
But no, I don’t think so. I think the buzz of online poker, the buzz of all poker, in fact, lies in the cards to come. While we’re waiting to receive them, our heads fill with questions. Will I get a playable hand? Will I pick up a monster? Will I face a tough decision? Will I maybe make some money? Do I get to be involved? If the answer to these questions is yes, then the promise of poker’s baseline buzz is fulfilled. If the answer is no, then we must fold (if we’re disciplined and smart) and wait patiently for the next hand.
But here’s the thing. If you’re playing poker in a cardroom, you get the baseline buzz of those next two cards maybe 20 times an hour… broadly diluted over time. Online, you get that buzz much more frequently. Maybe a hundred times an hour. If you’re playing heads-up, the buzz comes at you almost constantly. This, I believe, is why online poker is so addictive. It delivers a such a highly concentrated version of the poker buzz. Those next two cards keep coming and coming and coming until we’re saturated, stimulated, and ultimately overstimulated by all the decisions we get to make. I hesitate to use a cocaine analogy because it’s really kind of ugly and negative, but here it is: online poker is to realworld poker as crack is to blow. It’s the same stuff, only more so. Much, much more so.
