The article makes it sound like poker players have become a little more database-savvy than they really have. The vast majority of poker tracker users are vague

The article makes it sound like poker players have become a little more database-savvy than they really have. The vast majority of poker tracker users are vaguely aware that some db with a goofy name exists, but that's about it. The number of them who know what a foreign key is is a rounding error. And the reason poker attracts so much technology is the same reason the stock market does: there's a hell of a lot of money to be made. A $50 piece of software is worth what you pay for it 10,000 times over if it even improves your win rate by 1% (and Poker Tracker most certainly does much more). A bot that can average winning 1 cent a hand could make you a millionaire, so a year or two spent building it is easily justified.