A French physicist has used a scientific model, which he claims can calculate statistical tendencies within the game of poker, which can in turn be used to predict outcomes.
Clement Sire, from the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics at the University of Toulouse, claims to be able to tell anything from the length of a game to the eventual winner and other placings.
Due to the fact that poker is a closed system, not influenced by outside factors such as politics or weather, certain probabilities are fixed.
Sire reckons he can predict when a player will fold and the number of chips a player will bet, based on the model. He can tell the chip distributions, based on the initial number of players in the game. The frequency with which chip leaders accrue counters, he says, is a natural phenomenon, independent of the character or skill of players.
His research comes after own experience playing online. The prof said: "I noticed when playing that when I had twice the number of chips as the average. I was typically in the ten best people of a 100-person tournament."
When Sire found that a physical model fitted the structure of poker exactly, he concluded that the key features of games are predictable.
A French physicist has used a scientific model, which he claims can calculate statistical tendencies within the game of poker, which can in turn be used to predict outcomes.