Monkey Poker Players said to have +EV

If you’ve ever watched Daniel Negreanu on High Stakes Poker or taken a peak at Mike Matusow’s online cash game stats, you probably wonder how a monkey would fare in poker. Surprisingly, they might not fare too bad according to a new study by the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center.

The study put chimps through a series of tests that showed they have the ability to tell what other people are thinking. To put this into a better perspective, LiveScience.com wrote, “Chimpanzees apparently can figure out what others are thinking, a mental ability seen nowhere else in the animal kingdom so far except for in humans, scientists find.” This section of the article finished by saying, “Past research also showed that chimps can figure out what others know.”

Besides monkeys potentially being amazing bluffers, what’s interesting about this study is that it brings us all back to 2006 when a poker room wanted to enter a monkey in the WSOP.  Dubbed “Mikey the Chimp,” this poker playing monkey was discovered, and said to actually know how to play poker.

Not wanting to make a mockery of their event, the WSOP banned the monkey from playing to avoid the spectacle. Of course, in an event that commonly allows side show acts such as Nelly, George Costanza and Lou Diamond Philips to play, is letting a monkey in really that bad?

I suppose so……..maybe Mikey can satellite his way in one of these years.