Matt Hampton

When I am not working on research or teaching, I enjoy spending my time with two hobbies in particular: poker and chess. I enjoy each of these games of strategy for a variety of reasons, but I particularly find them fascinating due to the vastness of possibility within each. For example, in Texas hold 'em there are over 1,300 different possible combinations of hands. Much like in life, within these games practically anything can happen (even extremely low probability events).  Below is a plot of about 40,000 hands of online poker that I played over the last several years. The horizontal white line is the break even point, the blue line represents showdown winnings, the red line non-showdown winnings, and the green line net winnings. The orange line represents my expected winnings. Note that though I was comfortably in the black at about the 27,000 hand mark, a bad run left me back near the break even point. Also, my expected value is in negative space!