Would this be plagiarism?

[icetonez]

This summer when I started to take poker seriously I invested $50 in Poker Tracker. Like many other players I wondered if I was good or just running well.

After reading many similar discussions on variance and how many hands it takes to prove that you're a winning player, I thought of an improvement to Poker Tracker. Just like there's an index to measure aggression, I thought there could also be one for luck. That way you could better gauge your play in the short run.

I e-mailed the good people at PT and they said they had already come up with a similar idea and that it would be out in their next version.

Today was the first day of my last full time semester towards my finance degree. The class I dread most already is E-business (I'd rather just show up for two multiple choice exams during the semester rather than several group projects). Luckily one of the projects is individual and we must create a new product or improve an existing one and make a web site for it and write a paper on it. Since it's just for academia and because I did think of it on my own before I asked PT, would it be OK for me to use this improvement for my product?


If it is ethical, what sorts of factors would you put in the luck index? For example starting hands. Basically I would compare the number of times I recieved AA versus the 121:1 or whatever it is that you "should" get AA. And then for the more ambigious hands I would use something like the poker room hand EV database and give a weight to each hand. So basically I'm looking for a product that I would know, that the teacher wouldn't know much about, that would be a genuine improvement, and that would be interesting.

[uuDevil]

Certainly not plagiarism, which has a pretty specific meaning that doesn't apply here. I don't see an ethical problem unless you misrepresent how "new" this idea is. There are already similar products doing similar things. You may want to check out http://www.evtester.com

Edit: BTW, I think this is very cool, since I "know" I'm getting really crappy cards: /images/graemlins/cool.gif

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I e-mailed the good people at PT and they said they had already come up with a similar idea and that it would be out in their next version.

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[New York Jet]

I checked out your link. My EV for the last 1979 hands is 29.32%.
Anyone out there having worse luck within the last 1000 hands?

<font color="green"> New York Jet </font>

[uuDevil]

31.65% over the last 358 hands, but this is probably better than average over the last 3000 hands. What really hurts is combining bad cards overall with getting good hands beaten like a drum.

BTW, I think this number is supposed to represent how often you would get worse cards. That's different from EV.

[Stefan Prodan]

If it's 35%, doesn't that mean you're 35% over the normal EV?

Otherwise I don't see how you can take a percentage of something that goes positive or negative and have it mean something. (That is, if you only lose $1 when you're supposed to lose $10, that's good, but that's 10% EV by some sort of weird definition I guess)

Edit: Oh I see, it goes from 0% to 100%, so it's your position on the bull curve o' luckiness. Right.

[bholdr]

I believe that acdemic papers/ research, etc, are exempt from normal plagerism laws. this isn't the best place to check, though.

[Huxley]

The Poker Academy software has a "Luck Meter" function that does exactly what you are talking about. You should contact their developers through support on their website, I think they will be happy to discuss and share with you.

[maurile]

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I believe that acdemic papers/ research, etc, are exempt from normal plagerism laws.

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Not true at all.

What the original poster has in mind, however, is definitely not plagiarism. You can't copyright a general idea. For example, as somebody mentioned, Poki Poker Academy already does this; but that certainly wouldn't stop Turbo Texas Hold 'em or PokerTracker or anybody else from also doing it, even if they use the exact same formula (as long as they write their own code instead of stealing it).

[maurile]

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If it is ethical, what sorts of factors would you put in the luck index? For example starting hands. Basically I would compare the number of times I recieved AA versus the 121:1 or whatever it is that you "should" get AA. And then for the more ambigious hands I would use something like the poker room hand EV database and give a weight to each hand. So basically I'm looking for a product that I would know, that the teacher wouldn't know much about, that would be a genuine improvement, and that would be interesting.

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I would use the PokerRoom EV database for all hands, including AA. The average player should have an expected card-EV of zero (minus the rake) over any number of hands. If your EV over the last 100 hands -- based on the PokerRoom EV database -- is 2.4 big bets, you got lucky with respect to your starting hands. Sort of, anyway. That measure of "luck" won't reflect actual luck all the time. For example, it's generally lucky to get pocket kings. But it's extremely unlucky to get pocket kings when the person to your left gets pocked aces on the same hand. (You would have been much better off getting 72o on that hand.) Working that kind of thing into your preflop luck factor is tricky, though, because not every hand gets shown down.

Also, you'd have to measure post-flop luck independently, which is also tricky since not every hand gets shown down. So you really don't know what your pot equity was on the flop if a few people fold on the turn or river.

Poki has an unfair advantage over PokerTracker in this sense since Poki knows what cards everybody is dealt on every hand.