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Prize and Risk-Taking Strategy in Tournaments: Evidence from Professional Poker Players

2004; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.2139/ssrn.603525

1556-5068

Jungmin Lee,

Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics

This study examines whether people optimally respond to prize incentives for risk taking in tournaments. I exploit the television game show World Poker Tour as a natural experiment. The results show that professional players strategically choose the degree of risk taking depending on the incentives implied by the prize structure they face. I find that they are more sensitive to losses than to gains.