BY TOM SOMACH

A noted author who wrote a best-selling book about economics is writing a book that he says will be the most complete statistical analysis ever done on poker.

Steven Levitt, an economist and economics professor at the University of Chicago, wrote the best-seller “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” which a few years ago was on the New York Times best-seller list for weeks.

He is now turning his economics expertise towards the grand and glorious game of bluffs, flops and royal flushes.

On his website about the project, www.pokernomics.com, Levit says his book will answer the following long-pondered questions about poker: “How much more successful can a player be if he knows the odds? What are the best betting strategies for getting the most money out of a winning hand? Are there simple betting strategies that can be used to win money even with losing hands? To what extent does position from the button and position relative to other players matter? Does having a big stack of chips allow a player to bully others and win more of their money? Do people lose big after winning a big hand, or does success follow success?”

And how does Levitt, who is a poker player himself, plan to go about answering those questions?

According to his website, “Our goal is to understand the factors that make players successful at poker. Many people have written books on poker theory, but there has yet to be a systematic analysis using actual data on what works and what doesn’t…(this will be) the first large scale analysis of poker.”

Levitt is asking poker players to send in hand histories of past poker play, which he will then analyze for the book.

Specifically, he says, he is looking to analyze game play in Texas hold ‘em, both of the limit and no-limit variety.

“It is our goal to collect as many hand histories from individual players as possible,” Levitt says on his website.

“Using these, we will determine what accounts for different people’s success in poker. Are there any commonalities between the very best players? How much can people expect to make before the flop based upon starting hands alone? To what extent are the very best players beholden to luck? The number of questions that will be able to be answered is huge.”

Levitt, who has been working on the project for over a year, gives no timetable for when the book will be completed.

That’s understandable.

It takes a long time to study a million poker hands so you can determine whether six-three offsuit or seven-two offsuit is better over the long run.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)