discuss

[mike l.]

i posted privately to a friend but i might as well put it out here.

what online is teaching us, where seemingly good winning players can "run bad" for 100k hands, and not know anything with confidence until they reach a million hands, is that the long term is so very long term in limit hold em because luck is a much bigger factor than previously thought (or than "experts" have let on or even realised).

in fact, once you get beyond some very simple concepts like degrees of tightness and the logic of basic postflop play, the game is primarly luck. how you play 55 on the button after two limpers, what you do w/ KQ utg (or KJ for that matter), and so on and so forth are meaningless. all that matters is how you ran that night for a couple hours and whether youre smart enough to go spend your winnings on something worthwhile or chump enough to squander it away through another period of "running bad".

im calling bullsh*t on the whole thing. the only people ever sure to make money are the ones collecting the rake. and ive won every year ive played, more and more each year, for the past 5 years. and that's meaningless.

[Zeno]

Below is a slightly modifidied version of a 'Theory' that I posted in the Poker Theory Forum in early December, 2004.

************************************************** ******

Zeno’s Theory of Poker

The only people (or institutions) that make money at poker are those that make a living from other poker players that think they can make a living off of playing poker. The rest is superfluous.

Perhaps another way of stating the above is:

Poker is a continual self-perpetuating hoax, and most that engage in it never realize it.

This is a working hypothesis, which means, in the parlance of science, that it is in a state of flux. What is also paramount to any working hypothesis is what it does not say, either by deliberate exclusion or implicitly.


The above ‘Working Hypothesis’ is a copyright of Zeno World Domination Enterprises Inc. - The first and last in Nuclear Arsenals and other useful toys. Any unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.


-Zeno: Zen Pokermaster

[Michael Davis]

I find this line entirely inconsistent with your exhortation that I take on a mortgage.

-Michael

[mike l.]

ok but what i say expands on what you did considerably and it sounds like what youre saying is that some players make money off of other players who dont realise they cant beat the game. your definition is open to enough interpretation to continue the hegemony of current mainstream poker bullcrapp: namely the idea that there is enough skill inherent in limit hold em to make it less than random short term luck that lasts for years on end.

my theory makes room for:

a: donkeys weve all seen who play almost randomly and terribly who undoubtedly win month after month, sometimes for years.

b: seemingly good disciplined winning players who run poorly, break even, or even lose for months on end at a time.

it's all because of the new evidence given us from online play, online swings, online results, etc. evidence that all points to the long term being so long that the game is meaningless in terms of earning money, and evidence that proves the game is more luck based than previously thought.

[mike l.]

"I find this line entirely inconsistent with your exhortation that I take on a mortgage."

no it's not. the idea is you take the money youve made and

SPEND IT!

dont give yourself the chance to run bad for 5 figures or whatever.

and then get a regular job. it doesnt have to be something you hate, in fact it doesnt have to be regular. but there is more to life than letting what you do depend on the primarily luck based world of limit hold em.

[Lestat]

You're right and you're wrong.

It's all about edge. What you've been hearing or possibly even experiencing for yourself online is due to a significant reduction in edge. 1bb/100 is a respectable win rate online, yet this would be considered puny by most live game standards among professionals.

Reduced edge greatly increases fluctuation. Increased fluctuation means you have to sift through more luck before it trues up. It would be almost impossible for a good player to go a 100k hands in a live game and not know anything. It's not the "live" that makes it any different, it's the difference in edge.

[Chaostracize]

Wow. This is really depressing.

PS Hooray for NL.

[mike l.]

1bb/100 is acceptable. waiting to log 3 million hands before you really know youre a 1bb/100 player is not. well wait make that 2.5 million at least that's what they told me youd need over at the probability forum to be withing +/-.1bb/100 confidence level. but i think that guy may have fudged the SD too low so it's actually more like 5 million.

"It would be almost impossible for a good player to go a 100k hands in a live game and not know anything. It's not the "live" that makes it any different, it's the difference in edge."

and the idea that live games are better or have less fluctuation or online games have reduced edge does not bear out. the live games ive played in are incredible by standards previously thought to matter like looseness, passiveness, fishiness, but these online games are even more incredible. so live players need at least 2 million hands themselves. let's see... 35 hands per hour time 2000 hours is 70,000 hands per year...so hmm that's like 25-30 years.. seems reasonable.... NOT!

random meaningless ultra-long term luck based GAMBLING hoax.

[Zeno]

Two words - Working hypothesis. So continual refinment is anticipated.

Note also that many people or institutions make money off poker in a secondary fashion or manner and not by directly playing themselves. There are a few other things to note in my initial post also.

Anyway, it's late and I must retire. Carry on.

By the way, all of life may be a hoax or some cosmic joke. So poker is only one small splinter of the LUDICROUS whole. Next hand.

-Zeno

[Lestat]

If your edge is .5bb/100, I hazard to guess you'd need about 400k hands to be assured a win. You could hit rock bottom at about 100k hands. You'd need about a 633 big bet bankroll. And yes. You would need a LOT of hands for your edge to true up. 5 mil to get within .1/100 seems a little high though. Maybe 5 mil for .01/100.

<font color="red"> by standards previously thought to matter like looseness, passiveness, fishiness, </font>

Previously thought to matter? Please don't be changing poker theory without telling me. just kidding /images/graemlins/wink.gif



<font color="red">so live players need at least 2 million hands themselves.</font>

You don't need 2 million hands. I'm sure you would be well within 10% of a big bet of your true expectation within a couple of years. It certinaly wouldn't take anywhere near 25-30. After a point what does it matter? If you are a 20-40 player, is it going to make or break you if you're making $35/hr. instead of $37/hr.? All that matters is you are winning somewhere near 1bb/hr. and it shouldn't take more than 4000-6000 hours to know that. In fact, you'll likely be able to suspect this sometime between year 1 and year 2.

<font color="red"> random meaningless ultra-long term luck based GAMBLING hoax. </font>

This sound like someone who's been running bad. Everything Ok?

[NLSoldier]

[ QUOTE ]
This sound like someone who's been running bad. Everything Ok?

[/ QUOTE ]

Correct, and no /images/graemlins/smile.gif

(Refering to myself, not Mike)

[Justin A]

mike,

i have a lot of respect for you and what you write, but this post sucks. we know there's a lot of short term luck involved, but we play because every time we sit down at the poker table, we have a better chance of winning than losing. yeah there's a lot of luck involved, but it's dead wrong to say all the little marginal decisions don't matter.

[ QUOTE ]

im calling bullsh*t on the whole thing. the only people ever sure to make money are the ones collecting the rake. and ive won every year ive played, more and more each year, for the past 5 years. and that's meaningless.

[/ QUOTE ]

i'm calling bullshit on this statement. find me a really good player who isn't sure to win the money in the long run. and if you're talking about the short run, well we all knew that anyway. you're results for the last five years sure as hell aren't meaningless. you're results for the last three months are.

[NLSoldier]

[ QUOTE ]
i'm calling bullshit on this statement. find me a really good player who isn't sure to win the money in the long run.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are missing the point. Mike is saying we need to re-evaluate what we call "the long run"

How long are you suggesting it is? Apperntly somewhere between 3 months and 5 years?

[Subfallen]

Interesting to hear this from so well-respected a poster. Personally, after starting $5/$10 5Max on PokerRoom.com at +340 BB, it's been -210 BB directly afterwards, and poker honestly doesn't even feel like the same game. When 5 times an hour, you 3-bet AK, are called by K2s, and see a K27 flop...man...this game feels crazy. I finally understand how El D. listed a 30k break-even stretch.

[mike l.]

"I finally understand how El D. listed a 30k break-even stretch."

that's just the tip of the iceberg. as time goes on you will read some really ugly stuff. and all of it will lead directly to what im saying. the math is there, it all adds up. limit hold em is a farce.

good luck guys!

[mike l.]

"within .1/100 seems a little high"

"I'm sure you would be well within 10% of a big bet of your true expectation within a couple of years."

check with others. the math does not bear this out.

"This sound like someone who's been running bad."

ive run bad, but before that i ran good, so good i bought 5 houses w/ the extra money (not own outright, just "own"), and before that i ran bad at times, but mostly ran really really good. and right now im running okay, but i think due to my thinking on this, my clarity, im about to run better than ever.

in other words: your theory stinks.

[mike l.]

"find me a really good player who isn't sure to win the money in the long run."

define long run.

(hint: your answer will be very wrong.)

[Subfallen]

mike -

Do you feel differently about NL?

[einbert]

[ QUOTE ]
"I finally understand how El D. listed a 30k break-even stretch."

that's just the tip of the iceberg. as time goes on you will read some really ugly stuff. and all of it will lead directly to what im saying. the math is there, it all adds up. limit hold em is a farce.

good luck guys!

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't get it.

If LHE is just a farce, why are you going to continue playing? Just for fun?

[Gabe]

[ QUOTE ]
This sound like someone who's been running bad.

[/ QUOTE ]

and/or someone who didn't keep records when he was running good.

[Subfallen]

I don't think mike is saying that LHE cannot be +EV, just that the variance is ridiculously high.

[B1GF1SHY]

Maybe still +EV but it contains a whole ton of luck. It's so up and down it's crazy, silly crapshoot /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Bluffoon]

[ QUOTE ]
i posted privately to a friend but i might as well put it out here.

what online is teaching us, where seemingly good winning players can "run bad" for 100k hands, and not know anything with confidence until they reach a million hands, is that the long term is so very long term in limit hold em because luck is a much bigger factor than previously thought (or than "experts" have let on or even realised).

in fact, once you get beyond some very simple concepts like degrees of tightness and the logic of basic postflop play, the game is primarly luck. how you play 55 on the button after two limpers, what you do w/ KQ utg (or KJ for that matter), and so on and so forth are meaningless. all that matters is how you ran that night for a couple hours and whether youre smart enough to go spend your winnings on something worthwhile or chump enough to squander it away through another period of "running bad".

im calling bullsh*t on the whole thing. the only people ever sure to make money are the ones collecting the rake. and ive won every year ive played, more and more each year, for the past 5 years. and that's meaningless.

[/ QUOTE ]

If I were to graph my win rate I sense that I would get a line with up and downswings (little squiggles) lasting three to ten thousand hands or so with the downswings being shorter than the upswings in a ratio of about two to one in aggregate.

Going longer term I sense that I would see longer term variations (bigger squiggles) in my win rate lasting thirty to fifty thousand hands.

What Mike is saying is that if you play long enough you will see monster variations in your win rate lasting three to five hundred thousand hands. When you eventually hit this downswing you are going down and there is nothing you can do about it.

Ouch.

[Tommy Angelo]

Here’s a few other things to consider mike.

How much to do you think is raked/collected/tipped out of all poker games in the world each year. I'm talking every online game, every public B&amp;M game, and every home game, in the world. Let's say it's one billion dollars per year. This means that the hugest +EV play in the history of earth is available to us right now, the poker players. If we thought of ourselves as a single organism, and we all quit playing for life, today, it would be a billion-dollar per-year swing.

Another thing. Add up how much in rake and tips that you, mike, have paid in the last five years. I’m guessing it’s about $100,000. Now add that number to your actual "winnings" as you calculate them. That sum is the true measure, for it is the only measure, of just how “lucky” you have been. If there’s one time to be results oriented, it’s when you’re talking about results. This idea you have in your head about needing to play millions of hands in order to determine what "should" happen in the next millions of hands is just goofy. The only way I know to keep score, in any game, is by looking at what happened, not by conjecturing about what might happen next.

Here’s another thing. Hold’em didn’t used to exist. And it used to have one blind. Now it has two blinds. Tomorrow it might have three. Right now hold’em is structured well for the house. Tomorrow it might be structured better for the house, meaning the affect of “skill” would be less, meaning the money would stay in motion on the table longer, meaning more of it would go down the hole, faster.

What if the house just raked everyone’s money before the first hand was even dealt and said okay, that’s it, everybody go home?

That’s what all public poker is mike. Just like that. The rate of rake is a balance between what the house can get, and what we’ll give. The game itself is just a product for sale.

The perfect arrangement for the house would be if nobody ever won, but everyone said they did. I’ve played in games like that before. But of course I’m the guy who really DID win!


Tommy

[gaming_mouse]

Mike,

You are overstating your case by quite a bit. This question has been answered many times in the Probability forum, but I'll do calcualtion here, since you mentioned something about the math.

Typical limit SD is between 14 and 17 BB/100. Let's call it 15. Then after 100K hands, the sample win rate of a player whose true win rate is 1 BB/100 has a normal distibution with:

mean = 1
SD = 15/sqrt(1000) = .47

This means that 95% of the time the player's sample win rate will be within .94 BB of his true win rate. In addition, there is only about a 1.6% chance that such a player will be even or losing after 100K hands. This kind of evidence is very far from meaningless, IMO.

gm

[TStoneMBD]

i really dont understand what the whole "hoohaa" is all about here. maybe youre right, poker really does suck. i dont know. all i know is all the money ive won during my short lived career. it may be miniscule to the people on here making 200k a year however, even though its only because they are all on the better side of variance than i am, according to you.

youre right though. you shouldnt base your future earn on what youre currently earning in poker right now. variance is fearce. when someone asks what it is that you do for a living, dont say poker player. say that youre retired, for thats what you are. you have money. you play poker on the side. until that money runs dry you are retired. look at it from that perspective.

[glorfindel]

Here's another way of looking at it mathematically, maybe. Correct me if I'm wrong, gaming mouse, but I'm working on understanding this standard deviation and variance stuff.

Assumptions:

100 hands = 1 hour of play.
SD for 1 hour of play = 15BB.
expectation for 1 hour of play = 1BB.
number of hands in 1000 hours = 100,000.
2SD = 95% confidence interval.

SD for 1000 hours = 15BB * sqrt(1000 hours) = 474 BB

There is a 95% chance that after 1000 hours of 100 hands per hour that a 1BB/hour player's results will end up between

1000BB - (474BB * 2) and 1000BB + (474 * 2) or
52BB and 1948BB.

If I did this correctly, it's clear that a 1BB/100 player should not be losing, but he could easily not be winning very much after 100,000 hands.

[JAA]

Well, are there any winning players on here who have logged a losing year (assuming they played a fair amount over that year)? I suppose that this would provide support for your argument.

I concede that how I play 77 after 2 limpers on the button with tight blinds is trivial, but I think the mistakes that your opponents make add up faster than you are giving it credit for. We make the vast majority of our money from the latter, not the former.

- Jags

[mikelow]

So is the standard deviation that huge?

I think you are a winning player and you know it. Skill has to take over at some point.

What might be happening, is that there are so many players with some skills, but not that good. So if there are fewer fish, it's harder to win, and the standard deviation might not go up that much but your edge is less and less.

[Turning Stone Pro]

I agree to some extent with Mike. However, I think that game selection and quality of competition is being lost in this discussion. This is the single biggest factor when trying to figure out standard deviation, what is the 'long run', etc., whether someone is a winning or losing player, etc.

I am not a mathmetician. Never will be, never have claimed to be. However, I know that if I play with players that are better than me, make better decisions than me, understand pot odds and things better than me, read me better than I read them, I will lose.

If I play with people, each one my exact speed, I will lose, because of the rake.

If I play with people who, on average, are slightly worse then me, I will make a little, not too much, because of the rake and luck and standard deviation.

However, if I sit down at a table with several inferior players, who do not have the experience, knowledge, and training that I do, and are concerned about things like grocery money and rent and the like, I will beat them. There may be some short-term downswings, but I will beat them. This math I understand.

It's all about game selection.

TSP

[Tommy Angelo]

"when someone asks what it is that you do for a living, dont say poker player. say that youre retired, for thats what you are. you have money. you play poker on the side. until that money runs dry you are retired. look at it from that perspective."

I agree. That's exactly how I see it. That why, if someone asks me, "Oh, you're a poker pro? Well what are you going to do about retirement?"

I reply, "Retire from what?"

[Zeno]

Mason Malmuth covers much on this and similar concepts in his book Gambling Theory and Other Topics.

The change in style of play etc for some poker games may vary the numbers a bit since it was published (I have the 5th edition, first printing, May 1999) but all the concepts are rock solid.

-Zeno

[fnord_too]

Do you know mike that in science you never "prove" anything? There is always the chance that you will observe something contrary to the theories you have accepted to date. In statistics, there is always some chance that your observations are an outlier. That is, if you do the statistic and determine that you are 95% sure you are at least a 1BB/100 player, then you will be wrong 5% of the time. If you say run the numbers and determine there is a .000000000001% chance that you are a losing player, you can be pretty sure you are not a losing player, but you can never be positive. That's statistics for you. (In regards to poker, all this glosses over the nasty complications that both your and your opponents', games are dynamic.) Certainly, the house's cut is pre ordained (though they have no gurantee enough people will play to cover their expenses), and the rake shifts everyone "true" win rate to the left.

I guess what I am trying to say is "Welcome to life! There are no guarantees." That applies to everything, not just poker.

[andyfox]

"the only people ever sure to make money are the ones collecting the rake."

With this, I agree. The long run can indeed be quite long and therefore one can run good or bad for a lot longer than people really realized before the more accurate statistical database we have with online play than we had with B&amp;M play.

"im calling bullsh*t on the whole thing."

Here, I'm not so sure. I can go to just about any game at Commerce and tell you who won and who lost last year and who won more and who lost less and I bet I come pretty close. The reason is the better players do better. Period. I'm not sure exactly how long the long run is, but a year is pretty close. And if people are playing only, say, 30 hours/week, that's "only" 50,000 hands.

[mike l.]

'This means that the hugest +EV play in the history of earth is available to us right now, the poker players. If we thought of ourselves as a single organism, and we all quit playing for life, today, it would be a billion-dollar per-year swing."

how about a compromise and only play home games or underground games w/ very low rake, just enough to pay the dealers, etc?

"Add up how much in rake and tips that you, mike, have paid in the last five years. I’m guessing it’s about $100,000."

i wish it were that low. from some quick math in my head it's probably double that.

"What if the house just raked everyone’s money before the first hand was even dealt and said okay, that’s it, everybody go home?"

if somehow we all got the high of playing hold em from that then that would rock.

"The only way I know to keep score, in any game, is by looking at what happened, not by conjecturing about what might happen next."

the game is so so long term that all that matters is the short term. all that matters is how you did today. there is not long term, it's like infinity. ignore it. spend the money, do everything you can to win as much as you can in as short a period of time, avoid feeding the rake as much as possible. get little quick hits throughout the week rather than binging and smoking it all in one grand night.

[fyodor]

[ QUOTE ]
I concede that how I play 77 after 2 limpers on the button with tight blinds is trivial, but I think the mistakes that your opponents make add up faster than you are giving it credit for. We make the vast majority of our money from the latter, not the former.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes this is where the money comes from. I think mike is overstating the luck factor. I also think most players underestimate the differences in skill levels at the game. Most know there is a big difference between a true expert and a total fish, but once they've read a cpl. books and logged a year of winning poker, they think they are not that far off expert status themselves, and certainly well above fish level.

I believe the winrates we are seeing online are more to do with the level of competition. I play 5/10 6 max at Party and I no longer use _any_ table selection. I just sit down at the first 4 available tables and win (most days) The competition is simply that bad that I can consistently beat the rake with my mediocre skills.

I am sure that if I sat down with a table of experts online and played about 35k hands per month I would be losing after 2 months minimum. I may run good enough to win 1 month but to win more than that I would have to be on the run of a lifetime or improve quickly.

The only math I have to back this up is the hard evidence at the tables where the bad players consistently chase draws with horrible odds when I would fold. Long term (by anyone's definition) they are making losing plays, and the players not making those losing plays will get the money minus the rake.

I will lose to better players due to subtler levels of errors that I am unaware of. In the end winrate is dependant on relative skill levels - your's vs. your competition.

[mike l.]

"1000BB - (474BB * 2) and 1000BB + (474 * 2) or
52BB and 1948BB."

thanks. this proves my point.

[andyfox]

You're on tilt and making false reads because you're desperate.

[mike l.]

"I think mike is overstating the luck factor."

and how many hands have you played? 2 million? 25 years? otherwise you have no evidence to support it.

[Lestat]

<font color="red"> Well, are there any winning players on here who have logged a losing year (assuming they played a fair amount over that year)? </font>

I do not believe that a live player with a 1bb/hr. edge can have a losing 2000 hour period. 1000 maybe. Again, it's all about edge. If your edge is only .5bb/1hr., then you can go a much longer time without winning.

If Mike is not content with what he's making or how long he can go without winning, then he needs to acknowledge his game can improve. Either that, or he needs to find better games.

What is he trying to accomplish by going on a public forum and stating to a bunch of professional poker players that poker is mostly luck and calling bullsh*t on the whole thing? Other than making a fool of himself, I mean.

[AceHigh]

[ QUOTE ]
what online is teaching us, where seemingly good winning players can "run bad" for 100k hands, and not know anything with confidence until they reach a million hands...

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think you understand standard deviation or standard error. For a player with a fairly normal standard deviation, and a decent win rate, 100K is a lot.

See this post for more details: 95% accurate win rates (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Board=genpok&amp;Number=1702898&amp;Foru m=,,,All_Forums,,,&amp;Words=&amp;Searchpage=2&amp;Limit=25&amp;Ma in=1692927&amp;Search=true&amp;where=&amp;Name=15443&amp;daterange =&amp;newerval=&amp;newertype=&amp;olderval=&amp;oldertype=&amp;bodypr ev=#Post1702898)

If you "good player" (winrate 2BB/100 or greater and SD of 16 or less) there is a less than 5% chance that you would be losing money for more than 25k hands.

[mike l.]

"Other than making a fool of himself, I mean."

so far no one has come up w/ a really good solid answer to why im wrong so who's the fool now?

[fyodor]

[ QUOTE ]
"I think mike is overstating the luck factor."

and how many hands have you played? 2 million? 25 years? otherwise you have no evidence to support it.

[/ QUOTE ]

No one has to play 2 million games to prove this. The luck factor is the mathematics of the game. You will get dealt these cards this percentage of the time. Your draw will come in this percentage of the time. The pot is laying you these odds. Up to you to play the odds or go against them. If you go against them you will lose long term.

[mike l.]

"If you "good player" (winrate 2BB/100 or greater and SD of 16 or less) there is a less than 5% chance that you would be losing money for more than 25k hands."

someone earlier already went over this. not losing money but up anywhere between 50 bbs and 2000 bbs. sorry but 50 bbs or anything like that after 25k hands is losing in my book.

limit hold em is a waste of time. anyone who says otherwise hasnt been through back to back 25k hand period breaking near even. (i havent btw, but im not sure im going to stick around and see how i like it).

[Clarkmeister]

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

http://forums.footballguys.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/crybaby.gif

[mike l.]

"The luck factor is the mathematics of the game. You will get dealt these cards this percentage of the time. Your draw will come in this percentage of the time."

oh i see, you really think it's that simple.. ok well you really have no clue what we're talking about here.

here check out this:

post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&amp;Number=1985674&amp;page=3&amp;view=c ollapsed&amp;sb=5&amp;o=14&amp;vc=1)

[mike l.]

how many hours you logged this year clark? 100? better hurry to catch up to the mammoth 500 you played last year.. live play of course so you play basically in a year what most online players play in a week.

btw i think that's the way to do it. basically recreationally and enjoy the money when you get it. youll be saying waaaaah when you hit a bump in the road though cause it will take you over a year to get out of it.

[mike l.]

maybe this guy's math is wrong. id say his sd of 15 is too low for online 4 table 6 max. meaning the long term is even longer than he says:

post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&amp;Number=1985674&amp;page=3&amp;view=c ollapsed&amp;sb=5&amp;o=14&amp;vc=1)

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
how many hours you logged this year clark? 100? better hurry to catch up to the mammoth 500 you played last year.. live play of course so you play basically in a year what most online players play in a week.

btw i think that's the way to do it. basically recreationally and enjoy the money when you get it. youll be saying waaaaah when you hit a bump in the road though cause it will take you over a year to get out of it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Unlike you, I actually know exactly how many hours I played and exactly how much I won. Record keeping might be a great place for you to start. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[Lestat]

mike,

I don't mean anything personal, but this stuff can be proven. I suggest you open a copy of Gambling Theory and other Topics by Mason Malmuth and plug in some numbers.

What you'll find is that a good player can run bad for a frightening long time. But you'll also see that luck IS overrided eventually. How soon it is overrided is directly related to edge (and standard deviation). In limit hold'em, bad luck can keep a good player down for about 1000 hours if he's really unlucky. Not indefinitely, as you seem to be suggesting.

I apologize. I shouldn't have implied you are a fool. But your making wild stabs at numbers, because you obviously haven't taken the time to work them out properly. This can all can be calculated. We don't need to guess.

[fyodor]

mike I am not an expert on the mathematics of winrate but I do know that it is not a constant. It will change as you get better. It will change if you change games. It will change if your competion gets better.

What I was focusing on was this part of your post:

[ QUOTE ]
luck is a much bigger factor than previously thought

[/ QUOTE ]

What is luck in poker? My understanding of luck is beating the odds i.e. sucking out. That only lasts so long. The odds will catch up.

What is your definition of luck in poker?

[Turning Stone Pro]

Cheer up, man. I have a week-long jury trial starting Monday where my guy is facing up to 25 years in prison if I lose.

Cheer up, man.

TSP

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
Cheer up, man. I have a week-long jury trial starting Monday where my guy is facing up to 25 years in prison if I lose.

Cheer up, man.

TSP

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, that guy is really running bad.

[mike l.]

"Unlike you, I actually know exactly how many hours I played and exactly how much I won."

so do i unless you were lying to me. 500 hours = nothing. not even a drop in the bucket of what we know as long term.

[mike l.]

"What is your definition of luck in poker?"

the thing you need to rely on when the game you are playing is so long (if we think of all sessions tied together as one long game) that you have to play absurdly long to have a firm grasp on your true hourly rate. luck = short term variance to the positive, also know as running good. bad luck = short term variance to the negative, also known as running bad.

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
"Unlike you, I actually know exactly how many hours I played and exactly how much I won."

so do i unless you were lying to me. 500 hours = nothing. not even a drop in the bucket of what we know as long term.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your memory is a little off about the hours, but that's not the point.

The point is that you wouldn't have to whine and moan about the huge luck factor if you had *any* freaking idea of your winrate in any and all games in which you play. But you have none. Zilch. Zippo. So instead, you need to come here and hope the math guys can steer you in the right direction. The problem is, you still have no idea how it relates to you because your winrate and standard deviation at every single limit/game/location are a complete and utter mystery to you.

Not keeping records is for losers. So is whining about luck.

[fyodor]

If this is all about you wanting to know your true winrate well than give it up. You never will. After you've played your last hand of poker ever you can look back and see what your winrate was.

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
If this is all about you wanting to know your true winrate well than give it up. You never will.

[/ QUOTE ]

Duh. One has to have the self-discipline to keep records to have any shot at that.

[mike l.]

"The point is that you wouldn't have to whine and moan about the huge luck factor if you had *any* freaking idea of your winrate in any and all games in which you play.'

if come on here and ask a math guy, hey i played 500 hours of live play last year (and that was the figure you quited me) and won $X, what do you think they would correctly laugh and say gee that's just about meaningless.

[fnord_too]

[ QUOTE ]
"Other than making a fool of himself, I mean."

so far no one has come up w/ a really good solid answer to why im wrong so who's the fool now?

[/ QUOTE ]

You are the one making the contrary statement; the burden of proof is on you.

Also, and this could be a misconception, but it does not sound like you have really studied probability and statistics. You point to analyses by others, but you really don't seem to do any quantitative analysis yourself.

A book you may really enjoy is "Conned Again Watson" by Collin Bruce. It is a great introduction to a wide array of topics every gambler should understand.

[Gabe]

[ QUOTE ]
The point is that you wouldn't have to whine and moan about the huge luck factor if you had *any* freaking idea of your winrate in any and all games in which you play. But you have none. Zilch. Zippo. So instead, you need to come here and hope the math guys can steer you in the right direction. The problem is, you still have no idea how it relates to you because your winrate and standard deviation at every single limit/game/location are a complete and utter mystery to you.


[/ QUOTE ]

[mike l.]

check this out: post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&amp;Number=1985674&amp;page=3&amp;view=c ollapsed&amp;sb=5&amp;o=14&amp;vc=1)

what that means is that even if i had kept perfect records for the past 5 years of mostly live play i would be off by about +/- 1 bb/100 hands! and you. and gabe. add in all the hours on here thinking/studying/whatever and you have a really low hourly rate w/ not much certainty as to where you really stand.

[mike l.]

is this guy wrong or right? please tell me he's dead wrong so i can go back to playing limit hold em like a lunatic every waking hour of my life.

post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&amp;Number=1985674&amp;page=3&amp;view=c ollapsed&amp;sb=5&amp;o=14&amp;vc=1)

[mike l.]

this is a crosspost:

check this out:

post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&amp;Number=1985674&amp;page=3&amp;view=c ollapsed&amp;sb=5&amp;o=14&amp;vc=1)

what that means is that even if i had kept perfect records for the past 5 years of mostly live play i would be off by about +/- 1 bb/100 hands! and you. and gabe. add in all the hours on here thinking/studying/whatever and you have a really low hourly rate w/ not much certainty as to where you really stand.

[droidboy]

[ QUOTE ]
"If you "good player" (winrate 2BB/100 or greater and SD of 16 or less) there is a less than 5% chance that you would be losing money for more than 25k hands."

someone earlier already went over this. not losing money but up anywhere between 50 bbs and 2000 bbs. sorry but 50 bbs or anything like that after 25k hands is losing in my book.


[/ QUOTE ]

It's important to note that those numbers represent a player who's win rate is 1 bb/100. That sort of win rate is not at expert level. Also, at 2000 hands per day, it only takes about two weeks to play 25,000 hands.

- Andrew

www.pokerstove.com (http://www.pokerstove.com)

[mike l.]

"at 2000 hands per day, it only takes about two weeks to play 25,000 hands."

how long does it take to play 2 million? cause no one seems to want to step up and refute the post below.

post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&amp;Number=1985674&amp;page=3&amp;view=c ollapsed&amp;sb=5&amp;o=14&amp;vc=1)

[mike l.]

this is the scariest part of the post:

"That is for +/- 1 standard deviation (68% confidence)... 4 times as many hands if you want 95%."

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
check this out: post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&amp;Number=1985674&amp;page=3&amp;view=c ollapsed&amp;sb=5&amp;o=14&amp;vc=1)

what that means is that even if i had kept perfect records for the past 5 years of mostly live play i would be off by about +/- 1 bb/100 hands! and you. and gabe. add in all the hours on here thinking/studying/whatever and you have a really low hourly rate w/ not much certainty as to where you really stand.

[/ QUOTE ]

1000 hours at 35 hands/hour = 35,000 hands. Which is more than the 22,500 hands he's talking about. That's less than one year for you and a far cry from five. Pretty simple math, Mike. Stop whining and shirking personal responsibility. Start record keeping and learning about yourself and your game. Frankly, like all who don't keep records, I think you are afraid at what you might find out.

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
"The point is that you wouldn't have to whine and moan about the huge luck factor if you had *any* freaking idea of your winrate in any and all games in which you play.'

if come on here and ask a math guy, hey i played 500 hours of live play last year (and that was the figure you quited me) and won $X, what do you think they would correctly laugh and say gee that's just about meaningless.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not the one whining like a little beotch though. And I'm not the one worried about luck. You are. And you have thousands of hours of unknown data that you weren't disciplined enough to log. So now you are in the dark, looking for answers that you should have provided to yourself, and frankly, are coming across as petulant and whiny.

[AceHigh]

[ QUOTE ]
someone earlier already went over this. not losing money but up anywhere between 50 bbs and 2000 bbs. sorry but 50 bbs or anything like that after 25k hands is losing in my book.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, gaming_mouse... he knows his math.

I still don't think you understand the math. Someone with a win rate of 2BB/100, would be right around breaking even for 25K 5% of the time, the other 95% they would be winning. Someone who lost 50BB is more likely to be have a lower winrate than to be "unlucky".

If someone has a losing streak of over 25K hands, they are probably have a lower winrate than 2BB/100, if it is the 1st 25k hands at that level it's more likely they are not a winning player at that level.

[mike l.]

you missed this part:

"That is for +/- 1 standard deviation (68% confidence)... 4 times as many hands if you want 95%."

also the part where el diablo broke even for 30k hands.

also the part where 22,500 hands is a for +/-1 bb 100. that's a pretty wide range!

[droidboy]

[ QUOTE ]
this is the scariest part of the post:

"That is for +/- 1 standard deviation (68% confidence)... 4 times as many hands if you want 95%."

[/ QUOTE ]

Is there some reason why you need to know your exact win rate? Because if there is, then yes, you're only going to be disapointed. One thing that people are glossing over is that your "true" win-rate is a non-stationary value. In other word, there is no "true" win-rate, no matter how many hands you play.

- Andrew

www.pokerstove.com (http://www.pokerstove.com)

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
It's important to note that those numbers represent a player who's win rate is 1 bb/100. That sort of win rate is not at expert level. - Andrew

[/ QUOTE ]

Mike, note that this translates into less than 0.4BB/hr live. Of course, that could be way high or way low for you but you have no way of knowing. One things for sure, if your winrate is 0.4BB/hr, you are right that poker is a pretty poor career choice if one is playing merely one table of live poker at a time. But one would have to keep records in order to have any idea if its correct to run those calculations for 0.4BB/hr or for 1.0BB/hr.

[mike l.]

"are coming across as petulant and whiny."

yeah we got it the first 12 times you said it. thanks.

i think i bring up some interesting points and questions in this thread about how the idea of long term is longer than we previously hoped it was. but i know you tend to think anyone who argues something outside your narrow scope of the 500 hours you played last year and the couple thousand cumulative before that is a retard so whatever.

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]

I still don't think you understand the math.

[/ QUOTE ]

He doesn't want to. Any more than he wants to keep records or know his actual win rate. I can only think of one reason why.

[mike l.]

"Is there some reason why you need to know your exact win rate?"

id like to be close! id like to not break even for 30k hands potentially! id like to not have to play somewhere between 250k and a million hands to find out!

[AceHigh]

[ QUOTE ]

"If you "good player" (winrate 2BB/100 or greater and SD of 16 or less) there is a less than 5% chance that you would be losing money for more than 25k hands."

someone earlier already went over this. not losing money but up anywhere between 50 bbs and 2000 bbs. sorry but 50 bbs or anything like that after 25k hands is losing in my book.

It's important to note that those numbers represent a player who's win rate is 1 bb/100.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not sure who you are talking to. Are you saying numbers like (-50BB to -2000BB)/25k are not 2BB/100 winrate numbers? And that player is likely has a 1BB/100 or less winrate?

If so, I agree.

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
"Is there some reason why you need to know your exact win rate?"

id like to be close! id like to not break even for 30k hands potentially! id like to not have to play somewhere between 250k and a million hands to find out!

[/ QUOTE ]

Then I'd recommend quitting poker and selling more books.

[mike l.]

ok so i can play 25k hands and that will tell me what i need to know, whether i should continue or not. youll stick to that right? i can go crosspost this at probability forum? this includes 4 tabling 6 max on party?

just say yes and im logging out of here and onto empire.

[mike l.]

"Then I'd recommend quitting poker and selling more books."

exactly where im headed with all this.

[mike l.]

"I can only think of one reason why.'

let me guess. im a retard?

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
"Then I'd recommend quitting poker and selling more books."

exactly where im headed with all this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank god. Then we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

More importantly, in case I haven't made this clear, this whole thread is irrelevant because you could magically play 20 million hands next year and you still wouldn't know what your win rate was because you don't have the self-discipline and maturity to keep records.

I know this much, it's impossible to EVER know your win rate without record keeping, and my math on that is ironclad. /images/graemlins/cool.gif

[disjunction]

Without offering an opinion, let me add a number to your discussion, since I haven't seen it elsewhere in the thread. If the discussion is in the context of income, a working week is 40 hours, give yourself 4 weeks vacation, a working year is 1920 hours, at 35 hands/hr gives you:

67200 hands per year.

Also, standard dev of 1 BB/100 hands is .35 BB/hr.

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The point is that you wouldn't have to whine and moan about the huge luck factor if you had *any* freaking idea of your winrate in any and all games in which you play. But you have none. Zilch. Zippo. So instead, you need to come here and hope the math guys can steer you in the right direction. The problem is, you still have no idea how it relates to you because your winrate and standard deviation at every single limit/game/location are a complete and utter mystery to you.


[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

Just to make the point for the 20th time. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[fnord_too]

[ QUOTE ]
you missed this part:

"That is for +/- 1 standard deviation (68% confidence)... 4 times as many hands if you want 95%."

also the part where el diablo broke even for 30k hands.

also the part where 22,500 hands is a for +/-1 bb 100. that's a pretty wide range!

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't have time to type now, but I think your fears are misguided if you are going by this post. Your interpretation seems funny. I will post something for you when I get time that may calm your nerves.

[mike l.]

"you still wouldn't know what your win rate was because you don't have the self-discipline and maturity to keep records."

nah pokertracker does it for me, no way around it. well i guess i could go through every couple weeks and delete the file on me so i dont have to face my retardation and low win rate square on.

[AceHigh]

Yes...but the number of hands you need is dependant on your standard deviation, 16 is decent guess for full Party 15/30 games, 6max may differ.

[Victor]

a 1.6% chance is very high.

[mike l.]

ok all you sick gambling addicts have talked me into continuing to play toward my goal of 100k hands 5-10 6 max. pt keeps the records so dont you worry your sick capped little head about that clarky poo.

but everyone understand that if it does turn out that im a retard and cant beat that 5-10 game for $200+ an hour i will hunt you all down like a rabid dog and slit your throats while you sleep. okay?

buh-bye!

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
ok all you sick gambling addicts have talked me into continuing to play toward my goal of 100k hands 5-10 6 max. pt keeps the records so dont you worry your sick capped little head about that clarky poo.

but everyone understand that if it does turn out that im a retard and cant beat that 5-10 game for $200+ an hour i will hunt you all down like a rabid dog and slit your throats while you sleep. okay?

buh-bye!

[/ QUOTE ]

Sweet Jesus, thank god that's over.


Now if we can only get you keeping records on your live play. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[mike l.]

"Now if we can only get you keeping records on your live play."

why? it's only going to be like 200 hours or something for the rest of the year. online is where the money is.

[AceHigh]

PokerTracker calculates standard deviation for you on the Session Notes page if you click on the "more detail..." button.

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
"Now if we can only get you keeping records on your live play."

why? it's only going to be like 200 hours or something for the rest of the year. online is where the money is.

[/ QUOTE ]

I should just let this die, but I can't resist asking "how do you know that's true, for you."

In all seriousness though, it wouldn't shock me at all to find out that you are a substantially better live player than online. Enough so that it overcomes tokes/travel/# of tables. But I guess we'll never know. Not even at a 68% confidence level. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[Spicymoose]

I don't understand how you actually think this is true. You have indeed shown us that to get very close to your true win rate, it takes a long, long time. But, why do you care about true win rate? If your "true" win rate is 1.3 BB/100 hands, yet you only observe a win rate of .7BB/100 hands, are you going to be THAT upset?

Although it is hard for an individual person to get close to their win rate, it becomes VERY easy to see that winning poker is possible when you have a big sample. Between all the 2+2ers on here, I am sure we have at least 10,000,000 hands. You do not believe that over those 10,000,000 hands, 2+2ers as a whole are a winning group?

You mentioned that El Diablo ran break even for 30k hands. I would be extremely suprised if that had NOT happend. Think about it, lets say the chance of running even over is 0.5%. I don't know the true numbers, but I think that might be a good estimate. The fact that El Diablo did something that only has .5% chance of happening seems crazy, but think about it in the larger sense. First of all, El Diablo has had over 5 30k streaks, so his probability of NOT having a 30k breakeven streak is (.995)^5, or 97.5%. That number still predicts he personally won't have a streak, but think about all the people you know who could have told you they ran even for 30k hands. You know at least 20 people who have had 5 30k streaks, so there have been at least 100 30k events. The probability of none of those people breaking even over a 30k session is .995^100, or 60%. That means that it is QUITE likely to happen to SOMEBODY, it just probably wont happen to you. (Note, this math is a bit fuzzy, but I think I am far UNDERestimating everything).

So I really don't get your reasoning. You seem to know you are a winning player, yet refuse to progress further out of being scared of possibly losing, or not winning enough.

[Senor Choppy]

[ QUOTE ]
it wouldn't shock me at all to find out that you are a substantially better live player than online. Enough so that it overcomes tokes/travel/# of tables.

[/ QUOTE ]

His opponents could be playing with their hands face up live and I doubt that would be the case.

[anatta]

Mike, a little over a year ago, you were thinking about playing 8-16 at Ocean's. I think that your investments made you poor and rich at the same time.

Then I saw you in the 20-40 everyday. You were doing the race and got like 800 hours. Tommy came out and talk to you. You stopped tilting, and you won. Won big. So you moved up big time and kept on winning. So now you are online. This could mean you ran bad at live play at those big limits. Not sure.

Question: You really think that if you or any other live player on this board played tilt free poker at the Oceans game for 1000 hours that we wouldn't be up big? I agree with the other poster about online. The games are a little tougher. Your reads and concentration aren't really there. So your edge is smaller. So you run bad longer.

Want my advice? Okay, since you asked...Get off the net, go grind it out again. Let your fro' go! Play with monkeys.

Stole my car last night! The cops found it out by UNLV. All my poker books in the trunk still. That's what I was worried about, my collection of books. I had already in my mind got a new car with the insurance. Anyways, car won't start, but I got the books back.

[Justin A]

[ QUOTE ]
ok all you sick gambling addicts have talked me into continuing to play toward my goal of 100k hands 5-10 6 max. pt keeps the records so dont you worry your sick capped little head about that clarky poo.

but everyone understand that if it does turn out that im a retard and cant beat that 5-10 game for $200+ an hour i will hunt you all down like a rabid dog and slit your throats while you sleep. okay?

buh-bye!

[/ QUOTE ]

You're probably joking, but if you're not then you can't beat the 5/10 6max game for $200+ per hour if you're four tabling. That's like a 5 bb/100 winrate. No one beats the game for that much.

[NLSoldier]

[ QUOTE ]
In all seriousness though, it wouldn't shock me at all to find out that you are a substantially better live player than online.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't you think just about everyone is a better live player than online?

[andyfox]

"Tommy came out and talk to you. You stopped tilting, and you won."

And he got angry at me for, in his mind, apparently suggesting that I had suggested that he had played some hands tilted (which I have never done). And claimed Tommy had done it too.

Sheesh.

[SA125]

You've got a lot of experience and have done very well playing live poker. Like everyone else, you're seeing something totally different playing online than what you've always seen. Whatever it is, there's definitely a difference. Sometimes things are what they seem and can't be rationalized.

[fyodor]

mike; this might save you some trouble. I am a mediocre player at best. I have 182,088 hands of 5/10 6 max with an hourly winrate of 2.9 BB (avregaing 2.75 tables at a time) and a standard deviation of 15.6777 BB per hour.

I threw all these numbers into a spreadsheet and assumed 150 hours per month. Results below.

http://img197.exs.cx/img197/5751/winrate3zy.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)

[astroglide]

i think anybody who, like me, ran into a 300bb downswing or a huge breakeven streak or whatever would tell you with a straight face that they were playing great. it's much easier to screw up online.

[Brainwalter]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
it wouldn't shock me at all to find out that you are a substantially better live player than online. Enough so that it overcomes tokes/travel/# of tables.

[/ QUOTE ]

His opponents could be playing with their hands face up live and I doubt that would be the case.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not if he's playing 5-10 online and 200-400 or whatever the f mike l plays live

[Clarkmeister]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
it wouldn't shock me at all to find out that you are a substantially better live player than online. Enough so that it overcomes tokes/travel/# of tables.

[/ QUOTE ]

His opponents could be playing with their hands face up live and I doubt that would be the case.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not very hard at all to make a lot more live when one is playing 100-200 at Commerce instead of 3-4 $5-$10 6-max tables.

[BradL]

Did he do it? /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[tolbiny]

No.

There are plenty of people i know that i wouldn't stake 5$ in a live game- they are action junkies. Smart as hell, good conceptually, but they can't take the grind of live. Several of them *could* most likely be taught to beat online games as having 7 tables of shorthanded 5-10 open would satisfy their need for almost perpetual action. Just an extreme example, but there are lots of subtle figgerences that could make a person more comfortable/happier playing online, which will result in better play 9 times out of ten.

[James282]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
it wouldn't shock me at all to find out that you are a substantially better live player than online. Enough so that it overcomes tokes/travel/# of tables.

[/ QUOTE ]

His opponents could be playing with their hands face up live and I doubt that would be the case.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not very hard at all to make a lot more live when one is playing 100-200 at Commerce instead of 3-4 $5-$10 6-max tables.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are definitely right about this. An expectation of 100$ an hour would be very high in the 5-10 sixmax. I can't imagine that the Commerce 1-2 game isn't beatable for more than this.
-James

[Michael Davis]

"It's not very hard at all to make a lot more live when one is playing 100-200 at Commerce instead of 3-4 $5-$10 6-max tables."

It's way closer than you think.

-Michael

[tolbiny]

Your problem mike is that you aren't the same player who played the 8-16 14 months ago, or the 10-20 or the 20-40 or the 100-200 or what ever the hell it was that you have been playing this past year +. You are a bizzare conglomerate of all of these players, and your varience needs to be based off the times when yor EV was 3 bb/100 and the times when it was -3 bb/100. People who think they are a 1 bb/100 player are most likely a 2.5 bb/100 player when on the top of their game. But when they are tilting/talking on the phone/ drunk/ tired orjust uninterested it is way lower. SO in some strange way they hold the SD's for like 9 different players within them. I am guessing you have at least that many from your posts. I have three that i have identified with probably an extra subset for each of them. I have 6 different varience problems to overcome.

How many do you have?

[bicyclekick]

Mike,

Often your posts are so spot on and very intering, but this whole thread is utterly ridiculous. Obviously live takes a very long time to get to the long run, but that doesn't mean that nothing matters, or that you need to know your specific winrate down to the .001. Who gives a [censored]. I've played enough that I know within far more than 1bb/100 and even if I was a full bb/100 under my winrate, I'd still be making a killing from these games. That's all I need to know, and all anyone should really care about.

[droidboy]

[ QUOTE ]
It's not very hard at all to make a lot more live when one is playing 100-200 at Commerce instead of 3-4 $5-$10 6-max tables.

[/ QUOTE ]

True, but it's not too far off: 4 5/10 tables, at 3 bb/100, 100 hands per hour is 4*30 = $120/hour.

- Andrew

www.pokerstove.com (http://www.pokerstove.com)

[mike l.]

"So you moved up big time and kept on winning."

dude i did that 2 years before that too and was playing 30 and 40 at commerce and winning a ton. you came to the show late.

congrats on your car. ill come see you out there soon.

[BottlesOf]

So how do you reconcile your great results with your new beliefs? Do you think you're just lucky? Is it just a coincidence that those who are most financially successful at limit hold'em are also those who speak about and analyze the game in the most sophisticated amd intelligent manner--the so called "good players"?

[imported_stealthcow]

all the things you mentioned worry me. but not right now.

the fact that every time you sit down to play the opponents and game texture are different is a testament to the fact that your bb/100 needs a huge huge amount of hands before converging. no one can/will dispute to you about that. you can sit down at a crazy table and avg. 4bb/100 or at a really tough one and avg. .5bb/100. having played 2.5 million hands before this wont change anything.

poker is about winning and losing. all you've done in this post is re prove how pointless and stupid it is when people mention their bb/100 as if it absolutley shows how much better they are then someone else.

i'm most worried that in 10-15 years if knowledge about the game continues to improve as it has, it will be a virtual crapshoot, with good players having edges comparable to that of blackjack and a ridiculously large SD.

stealthcow-

[mike l.]

"So how do you reconcile your great results"

i was trying to figure that out this morning and last night. i guess im just great and ill have to just keep playing and keep winning and suffer through some breaking even and losing every now and then. ill come back and report to everyone how great or lousy i am when i reach 100k hands online.

[BottlesOf]

[ QUOTE ]

Often your posts are so spot on and very intering, but this whole thread is utterly ridiculous. Obviously live takes a very long time to get to the long run, but that doesn't mean that nothing matters, or that you need to know your specific winrate down to the .001. Who gives a [censored]. I've played enough that I know within far more than 1bb/100 and even if I was a full bb/100 under my winrate, I'd still be making a killing from these games. That's all I need to know, and all anyone should really care about.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yea, what BK said. Except I don't make a killing, but hey, I have fun and make a lil scratch. Things could be worse. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[Gabe]

how do you figure out how many books per hour you'll sell next year with the kind of confidence you want? maybe the thing for you would be a 9-5 at some kind of factory. i could see you operating a fork-lift, or maybe doing food service with a fro in a hair net.

[Gabe]

that after all these years you've spent learning the skills it takes to play poker, you're just now getting around to learning the luck.

[mike l.]

it is manual labor, but it's more like printing money, albeit $1 at a time.

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
you missed this part:

"That is for +/- 1 standard deviation (68% confidence)... 4 times as many hands if you want 95%."

also the part where el diablo broke even for 30k hands.

also the part where 22,500 hands is a for +/-1 bb 100. that's a pretty wide range!

[/ QUOTE ]

I've played over 250k limit poker hands online. In that period, I had one breakeven streak of about 30k and two breakeven streaks of about 20k. But I also had plenty of 20k streaks of 5 or 6bb/hr.

Because I kept track of every session, I always knew what my winrate was as well as my standard deviation. My total winrate was always fluctuating, but the more and more hands I played, the less the fluctuation was after every additional 50k hands.

I also analyzed my play during every sub-par stretch and without fail, towards the middle/end of those streaks, my game was getting a little ragged and I was definitely playing with a higher SD and lower edge. Every time I tightened up and refocused to make it easier to get back on track.

I agree with you that few people really understand the impact luck has on poker. Most, when running good, far underestimate the impact of luck on their results. But many, like you are doing here, when not running good, also far overestimate the impact that luck has on the game.

[gaming_mouse]

mike,

i am math guy, and i've already answered once, but you asked about 500 hours of live play, saying that a math guy would claim this was meaningless. If you play 500 hours of live play i WOULD NOT say that your resluts are meaningless by any means. I would say that they are not completely conclusive.

Again:

500 hours * (35 hands/hour) = 17,500 hands.

SD for your normal distribution ~ 15/sqrt(175) = 1.13

Now if you are modest winning player live (1 BB/100 EDIT: fixed /hr to /100 typo), you are right that you can easily still be down. In particular, there is about an 18% chance that you will be.

HOWEVER, if you are very good player whose true win rate is, say, 3 BB/hr, that chance drops down to .004, about 4 in 1000. I don't know, but I'd guess that expert players like Clark make even more than this.

The other point you may have missed is that those months where you do do poorly, winning at somewhere near the bottom of your confidence interval's predicted rate, will be balanced by months in which you are running incredibly well.

[gaming_mouse]

[ QUOTE ]

I've played over 250k limit poker hands online. In that period, I had one breakeven streak of about 30k and two breakeven streaks of about 20k. But I also had plenty of 20k streaks of 5 or 6bb/hr.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, a key point

[mike l.]

i like your post especially the last paragraph. youve only played 250k? okay i will try and catch up with you.

[mike l.]

ok so tell me this:

4 table 6 max party. sd 15.5 bb/100 SD

how many hands until i know within +/- 0.5 bb/100 what my
winrate is?

again everything in bb/100. not per hour.

[gaming_mouse]

[ QUOTE ]
ok so tell me this:

4 table 6 max party. sd 15.5 bb/100 SD

how many hands until i know within +/- 0.5 bb/100 what my
winrate is?

again everything in bb/100. not per hour.

[/ QUOTE ]

For 68% confidence, we just need to solve for N:

15.5/sqrt(N/100) = .5

This works out to 96,100.

If you're multi-tabling 4 tables, you'll only need to "work" about 48 full 8-hours days to get there. That's actually not that long, IMO.

[NYplayer]

Mike,
What you are missing is that you don't have an exact win rate. you will sit at some tables where you have a negative winrate and you will sit at some tables where you will have a 5BB/100 winrate. unless your evironment is constant it will fluctuate based on conditions. You may not know your exact winrate but with some simple assumptions you should be able to figure out the longest you should go without making new highs. It will be based on your average "winrate" and standard deviation. Given your posts, i will assume you have a standard deviation on the high side. say 20bb/100. If you have a Stdev of 20 and a winrate of 3, you shouldn't go more than 40,000 hands without new highs. If your winrate is 2, you can have a stretch of 90K hands without new highs. if you're winrate is 1 than it's 360K hands.
Now if you have a lower standard deviation of 15 like most experts on here, and there are a lot of factors that will affect standard deviation (vpip, prf, and go to sd being examples, all lower lead to lower stdev), the numbers look as follows,
winrate, number of hands for new highs with 15 stdev, number of hands for new highs with 20 stdev
3 - 22.5K hands , 40K
2 - 50K hands , 90K
1 - 200K hands, 360K

you have to play very well to make more than 1bb/100 so if you have a high stdev you can go a long long time without new highes. If you're very good you will not experience long periods without new highs.

[NYplayer]

The guy in that post is right, but you don't have to have 2.2 million hands to know how big a winner you are. if you go 80K hands without new highs you're just not a 3bb/100 winner and you have to face that reality.
Another reason your winrate isn't constant over time is because you evolve as a player. I've played over 250K hands this year and I'm sure i'm playing better now than i did 3 months ago. it's hard to say what my winrate was then or is now, i can just look back and see how much i've won and feel confident that i'll continue to win.

[mike l.]

"This works out to 96,100."

that's what i figured by the guys at probability told me it's more 250k. or more. someone somewhere is wrong. i want a second opinion.

[gaming_mouse]

[ QUOTE ]
"This works out to 96,100."

that's what i figured by the guys at probability told me it's more 250k. or more. someone somewhere is wrong. i want a second opinion.

[/ QUOTE ]

my calculation is correct. the discrepancy may be due to:

1. assuming a higher SD than 15.5
2. assuming a higher confidence than 68%

but by all means post again in probability if you want confirmation on my calc. or PM BruceZ or pzhon and point them to the point in this thread where you asked me the question.

HTH,
gm

[etizzle]

what do you mean 'with new highs'?

[meanjean]

Could somebody sum all this up for me?

Am I supposed to quit trying to learn this game?

What is the take home from this? I'm not trying to be a smart ass...but what is the basic premise? Statistics say that you can't know if you're winning or if it is just random luck that your bankroll grows every month?

I honestly try to understand most all posts on this forum but I'm not getting this one.

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
"This works out to 96,100."

that's what i figured by the guys at probability told me it's more 250k. or more. someone somewhere is wrong. i want a second opinion.

[/ QUOTE ]

mike,

seriously, man, what is your problem? there have been countless posts explaining exactly how simple it is to figure out your confidence levels based on a number of hands, winrate, and standard deviation. if there's not enough info in this thread for you, go read one of the many detailed threads on this topic in the probability forum. in the past, we had to do things like calculate our SD from all our session results. now, you don't even have to worry about that, since PT will do all that for you. and if you don't want to do the simple math yourself, programs like StatKing exist that can tell you with what percentage certainty you are winning at a certain rate. stop asking for "second opinions" and go understand some of this stuff yourself and you'll be much better off.

[Lestat]

Take home this:

You will probably never know to the exact penny what your true win rate is. Even if you could, this will change daily and perhaps even by the hour as game conditions change.

You CAN know within a reasonable amount of time whether or not you are beating a game. It will take a while longer, but you will eventually be able to aproximate to within 10% of a big bet, how much you are beating this game for. Then you make a decision. Is it enough and worth your time? If it is, you keep playing. If it isn't, you either get better or find something else to do with your time.

Keep good records. What seems like forever really isn't. A couple of years back, I went through the worst run of my poker life. It seemed like pure hell. But when I looked at a graph of my total winnings it was just a blip in the picture. It helped me see that what seemed like sheer never ending torture to me at the time, was only a mere blip in the picture. I played on with confidence knowing it would pass. It did.

Be properly bankrolled. No edge will guarantee a win if you don't have enough money to sustain the swings.

You also need time. If you only play 300 hours per year, you have to be able to accept having a bad year.

So edge, bankroll, and time. If you have these 3 things in sufficient quantities you won't ever have to sweat the things mike is talking about in this thread.

[fyodor]

From earlier in this thread:

mike quoting me: "I think mike is overstating the luck factor."

mike: "and how many hands have you played? 2 million? 25 years? otherwise you have no evidence to support it."


The end of Diablo's last paragraph in his first post: " like you are doing here, when not running good, also far overestimate the impact that luck has on the game"

mike's response: "i like your post especially the last paragraph"

--------------------------

Looks like you're coming round mike

[BradL]

[ QUOTE ]
if you don't want to do the simple math yourself, programs like StatKing exist

[/ QUOTE ]

Excel can calculate confidence intervals as well.

-Brad

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
if you don't want to do the simple math yourself, programs like StatKing exist

[/ QUOTE ]

Excel can calculate confidence intervals as well.

-Brad

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah. I use a simple Excel spreadsheet for all my records and analysis. I was just pointing out that between PokerTracker and StatKing (I don't actually have StatKing, but I believe this is true - if not, someone please correct me w/ a poker program that does this) mike can get all the answers he wants with pretty much zero work.

It seems to me like mike is just flailing around right now taking in random bits and pieces of info from different posts - 50k? 1 million? 5%? 1%? +/- 1.5BB? - and then just making all sorts of assumptions based on these little snippets. That would be reasonable if we were talking about stuff that is really hard to quantify. But this isn't. All the data is right there for mike, as are the data analysis tools. If he wants the answers to his questions, it's really, really easy to get them.

[mike l.]

"Looks like you're coming round mike"

dude ive already been 'round. i just argue stuff adamantly that's quacky so i can get that little flame next to my posts. that's all i really care about.

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
i just argue stuff adamantly that's quacky so i can get that little flame next to my posts. that's all i really care about.

[/ QUOTE ]

hot.

[mikelow]

...in order find out our win rates and EVs. Now some players will have a higher standard deviation (like mr. l).

It could take a long time to arrive at a win rate, but for most people 20-30,000 hands should be enough to get a good idea. 95% of the time, if you're not winning, you're not good enough.

100k hands might be necessary for mike l.
I've tried the 5-10 6-handed game on Party, and it isn't easy.

[mike l.]

"Now some players will have a higher standard deviation (like mr. l)."

that's not the case. my sd is 15.3/100 hands.
my vpip is 24 and my pfr% is 14 and that's playing 5-10 6 max.

[mikelow]

Does anyone out there have any ideas on what the SD is in shorthanded games, or the online 6-player games? I'm wondering if it's any different from ring games.

If the SD is around 15bb/100, I would think 30,000 hands would be a sufficient sample size.

[NYplayer]

[ QUOTE ]
what do you mean 'with new highs'?

[/ QUOTE ]

meaning you are up 14K on year, but through natural fluctualtion you go down to only up 12.5K on year. you don't make a new high until you are up more than 14K on the year again. so the number of hands needed to be guarenteed new highs is the number of hands played since you were last at 14K till you cross it again. some people describe how much you can possibly lose, like 300 big bets. i think it's more important and interesting to find out how long it takes before you make new highs again. i.e. amount of time it takes to be a guarenteed winner, regardless of varience/luck, or assuming worst possible case senario of luck, assuming you have a positive edge.

[gaming_mouse]

[ QUOTE ]
Does anyone out there have any ideas on what the SD is in shorthanded games, or the online 6-player games? I'm wondering if it's any different from ring games.

If the SD is around 15bb/100, I would think 30,000 hands would be a sufficient sample size.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is around that, a little higher for some, maybe 19 or 20 for the rare few. People overestimate the additional variance of shorthanded games. There was a thread a while back which polled actual pokertracker stats, and IIRC the SH variances were only marginally higher than typical ring variances (ie, 15).

[stoxtrader]

NYplayer, Gaming Mouse, and El Diablo own this thread.

that is all.

[Justin A]

[ QUOTE ]
You CAN know within a reasonable amount of time whether or not you are beating a game. It will take a while longer, but you will eventually be able to aproximate to within 10% of a big bet, how much you are beating this game for. Then you make a decision. Is it enough and worth your time? If it is, you keep playing. If it isn't, you either get better or find something else to do with your time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lestat is making me more of a believer with every post. This is excellent advice.

[ggbman]

[ QUOTE ]
this is a crosspost:

check this out:

post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&amp;Number=1985674&amp;page=3&amp;view=c ollapsed&amp;sb=5&amp;o=14&amp;vc=1)

what that means is that even if i had kept perfect records for the past 5 years of mostly live play i would be off by about +/- 1 bb/100 hands! and you. and gabe. add in all the hours on here thinking/studying/whatever and you have a really low hourly rate w/ not much certainty as to where you really stand.

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe it's only 3 standard deviations to achieve 95% confidence.

[ggbman]

I wasn't around yesterday, so this thread has already been beaten to death, but i guess the important thing to take into account is that your "real winrate" isn't very important if it's within a certain range. I have probably played 150,000+ hands online within the last 7-8 months. If your winrate is between 2.5-3.0 BB/100, thats a big range. It makes an even larger difference if your winrate is 1.5-2 BB/100. But who cares exactly where it is? Just playt your game and make money. While you contemplate how difficult it is to discern your "true" win rate, others will keep playing their game and winning. Don't waste your time thinking about it, you know you win lots of money playing, so play.

[gaming_mouse]

[ QUOTE ]


I believe it's only 3 standard deviations to achieve 95% confidence.

[/ QUOTE ]

it's only two. three would give you 99.7% confidence.

[Senor Choppy]

[ QUOTE ]
It's not very hard at all to make a lot more live when one is playing 100-200 at Commerce instead of 3-4 $5-$10 6-max tables.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure why mike plays 5-10 online and would stick with only 4 tables, but assuming he stays there, I agree.

Multitabling the 15/30 on Party would be better for comparison. I don't know what kind of hourly rates are attainable at the 100/200 level live, but I'm pretty confident even the best players are making less than many of the solid players at the Party 15. Of course, it's a lot easier to log hours live.

[YoureToast]

[ QUOTE ]
what online is teaching us, where seemingly good winning players can "run bad" for 100k hands, and not know anything with confidence until they reach a million hands, is that the long term is so very long term in limit hold em because luck is a much bigger factor than previously thought (or than "experts" have let on or even realised).


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't buy it. I just don't believe that if someone showed me their hand histories for that 100K hand downswing you refer to generically, I couldn't, with enough time, point to all of the mistakes that player made which led to his/her loss. No truly good player will lose aver that amount of hands and, frankly, its absurd to think so.

[kenberman]

I agree with all this.

luck is a huge factor if you spend all your time playing with people who are exactly as skilled as you are.

if you find games with worse players than you, then luck decreases.

the importance of luck, and bad players at the table, are inversely proportional

[maxpowers21]

[ QUOTE ]
"I finally understand how El D. listed a 30k break-even stretch."

that's just the tip of the iceberg. as time goes on you will read some really ugly stuff. and all of it will lead directly to what im saying. the math is there, it all adds up. limit hold em is a farce.

good luck guys!

[/ QUOTE ]

This is an equivalent statement as to saying: "MATHEMATICS IS A FARCE."

P.S. Read Theory of Poker, by our gracious two plus two host.

[threepines]

We're all assuming that the sun will rise tomorrow.

[Tommy Angelo]

[ QUOTE ]
i think i bring up some interesting points and questions in this thread about how the idea of long term is longer than we previously hoped it was.

[/ QUOTE ]

I question the wisdom of expending energy on hoping that the long-term is short.

[mike l.]

"I question the wisdom of expending energy on hoping that the long-term is short."

then you must question the wisdom of the posts of every poster on here who disagreed with me, because my argument was that the long term is way longer than everyone thinks, and everyone came along screaming i was wrong and the long term is really quite short.

[arkady]

I probably should not be adding my commentary, because enough great minds have contributed to this thread. But I suppose it has not been mentioned/asked.

From what I gather you have been playing poker for a very very long time. This is the first time that you have ran badly enough to question some of the basic concepts of poker? Things like long term variance, luck, etc?

I say you are one lucky guy, after playing for 1 year online I have asked myself those questions more times than I would like to admit.

Lastly, if you think playing 250k hands while tabling 5/10 6max is a walk in the park - brace yourself. Especially if you are trying to prove something to someone. I would be prepared to follow Diablo's advice and evaluate your play every time you hit a bad stretch. It will happen more frequently than you hope.

Best of luck in the short term.

[Roy Hobbs]

You are on tilt. Take the week off.

RH

[esspo]

I haven't had any desire to play poker in the last month or so and for some reason wading through this post has got me all fired up.

[twowords]

How long is the long term?

Well say you lost the following 15-30 hand as I did.

You have 99

Flop 9T2. Turn 5. River J.

Every street is capped 4 ways except the river, which you fold and they cap.

Opponents show KQ,KQ......and JJ

Ok, I'm mad. Tilt, despair, etc. Then I think, what would a good player do instead of these things? Ahh they would say "well thats ok I was playing against 3 opponenets willing to cap with 2 outs between them, I will win in the long run, big time."

Since this hand I have never seen such a lucritive situation again (that big a fav vs that many opponents plus that many bets). If this great a stituation only happens a few times in my poker life, I already know got the short end of the stick. It doesn't look like I'll approach the long run expectation in this situation.

So bad luck in huge pots or in very lucritive situations can "last" very long time since they come by so rarely. I think.

[theBruiser500]

"im calling bullsh*t on the whole thing"

what are you calling bullshit on? you say youre calling bullshit on poker because it's all luck but it really sounds like your'e calling bullshit on the people who say you need huge databases of hands to determine your winrate.

i have played 125k-250k hands of NLHE online the past couple years and i believe in luck in poker less than most people. i think 20k hands is enough to give a decent idea of winrate most of the time (for NLHE at least) and in my experience, every bad run i've had has been partly due to tilt or bad play.

[Buccaneer]

I am going to stick my head in the noose and comment on this thread. I suck at poker but I am getting better by reading this forum and the others on the net as well as spending a couple of bills on the 2+2 books. Most of my post are flammed as soon as they are posted and looking back on them I can see why.

I play poker to learn control. That is all that I do it for. I don't care about the $. The stakes are low, very low for now. My control has improved greatly on the internet and I realize that in a live game I would be chum, not even a fish.

I do know a thing or two about probability &amp; sadistics (no typo). Probability predicts events. Statistics record events. To predict an event you must have a measurable event, a die hitting a 3, a card being a J. If a perfect cube, balanced, sized, etc is tossed in a random manner then you can make predictions. You can not predict which side will turn up but you can predict exactly how often a 6 will turn up: one time in every six rolls. 6 rolls not very accurate, 60 rolls more accurate, a zillion million trillion rolls more accurate but there is still the chance that 6 has not come up even once. You can put a value on the accuracy of your predictions by measuring the number of trials. 6 rolls = very low confidence, 60 rolls = low confidence, etc.

Statistics helps us predict events based on measuring previous events. The problem with statistics is variables, or the loaded/shaved die. Unless this variable is measured and its effect predicted then our statistics will not hold water.

Lets roll the die 6000 times. We should see near 1000 6s. We can even predict the deviation. We can say that we should see 1000 6s +or- 10 a specific % of the time. If our actual count is say 2000 6s then we have a problem. We counted wrong, our sample was too small, or we have had a loaded die slipped into our experiment - a variable.

As I see it poker played at expert level is played to minimumize the variables. This is done by minds that can measure the lift of an eyebrow, the inflection of a voice, the sound of the chips, they know exactly what a 3 bet UTG means, they know what your chances of hitting that straight and thier chances of hitting the flush. These guys have brains that are wired for poker.

My mind is not wired for poker, but I can train it rewire it so to speak so that it can play against those that have not rewired and win most of the time.

I am keeping records on my play. I soon will have enough hands to help me determine where the loaded dice in my game are and get them out or, ADJUST to them. My game improved greatly when I quit getting mad about people that played what I knew to be a stupid game and adjusted my game to thier play. This was in such a general way that no statistics were required to tell me to pay more attention to the board, fold more wisely, and never play when I am not in control of my emotions. I hope to create a database that will help me achieve and measure my goals and if I am progressing towards meeting them. If anyone has a good link for begining excel feel free to post it as I suck at that too!

I saw in this thread where El Diablo said he kept records and would consult them when he had streaks. He then was able to determine if the streaks were a normal deviation or if his play had changed. I am sure that El looked at his play in general what had/had not changed rather than exact %ages of bb/100. I bet he somehow eliminated data that had play in it that he had corrected. He used an imperfect database to ADJUST his play.

I think that if you are measuring your success/failure at poker with money then it might be a good idea to use another data base. Your bank account. Is it getting bigger or smaller over time? It would be accurate down to the penney.

A professionial baseball player can only hit a slider 2% of the time when the count is full. Over the season that number changes and is never going to be exactly 2%. Should he say that the 2% number is not accurate enough for him to analize a trend he does not like and quit baseball or should he say to his batting coach "coach, I suck at hitting the slider, especially when the count is full. I connect on only approx. 2% of the sliders I see. Would you look at my swing and help me to improve my ability to hit the slider?"

[TStoneMBD]

no offense, but i almost guarantee that noone will read your post to its full entirety.

[Buccaneer]

no offense taken.

[Bob Moss]

[ QUOTE ]
no offense, but i almost guarantee that noone will read your post to its full entirety.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know this isn't a joke, but after reading almost every post in this thread (I had time to kill...) I hardly got 3 lines into that last one, and your reply here just cracked me up.

Bob

[Nightwish]

[ QUOTE ]
"Is there some reason why you need to know your exact win rate?"

id like to be close! id like to not break even for 30k hands potentially! id like to not have to play somewhere between 250k and a million hands to find out!

[/ QUOTE ]
Mike, it's been 5 days now, so I hope you've calmed down a bit. If not, take a look at this math.

Let's say you've played 100,000 hands, which for a live player means something like 1.5 years of full-time (40 hours/week) play. Make it 2 years if you play less than that, take vacations, etc.

Let's also say that you keep good records and after 100,000 hands, your empirical estimate of your win rate is 2.5 BB/100. I think this is reasonable for a good pro. Assuming a standard deviation of 15 BB/100 (also reasonable), your 95% confidence interval is

(2.5 - 1.96*15/sqrt(1000), 2.5+1.96*15/sqrt(1000))

or

(1.57, 3.43)

This means that you can say with 95% confidence that your true win rate is between 1.57 and 3.43 BB/100. I know your response will be that you want to know your true win rate to within +/- 0.01 BB/100. But why? In the above scenario, after 1.5 years, you already know with very high confidence that you're a solid winning pro. Do you need the exact number to plan out your expenses? If so, assume that you're making only 1.57 BB/100 and plan your expenses, mortage, etc. around that.

Or is there something else you're trying to get out of this exercise? The stuff about you liking to not break even for 30K hands is just meaningless talk. Math is math, you cannot defeat it by like or dislike, so either deal with it (and play poker) or quit the game.

[Buccaneer]

[ QUOTE ]
I know this isn't a joke, but after reading almost every post in this thread (I had time to kill...) I hardly got 3 lines into that last one, and your reply here just cracked me up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yea I am still lmao. The humor is top notch here. If you post a question here then you better be ready to laugh at the sub alpha males trying to put you in your place. Sometimes they even throw bananas at you when they try to drive you off.

[elindauer]

edit: don't bother responding to this, I'm posting it on it's own.

You don't understand the math Mike, and you're not alone. I've seen this exact statement from so many people, but amazingly no one has ever bothered to point out what all this standard dev, confidence interval stuff really means.

So here's the deal. Let's say we look only at a player's results, and we attempt to determine if this player is a winning player. Fine. We check out his EV, we look at his standard dev, and we calculate a confidence interval. As Mike points out, correctly, we have to have a huge number of hands to determine somewhat conclusively that this player is a winner. Of course, this calculation uses no knowledge of poker whatsoever.

In real life though, we have much more information. Namely, we can look at the actual hands that were played, both by the player and by the opponents, to aid us in our estimate of how much money this player is making.

For example, if I see a player call 3 cold with A8, I don't need 2 million hands to tell me he's a losing player. I can do it in one. And if I'm playing with this guy, and he's losing money, then I'm winning it. Now I just look around the table, and look at all my opponents this way. If I can identify lots of obvious leaks, then I must be winning. It's that simple.

I've played about 30K hands of 15/30. I can barely prove mathematically that I'm a break even player. But I know I'm a substantial winner. I know I'm not just on a two standard dev hot streak. I know this, because I ignore the mathematics of confidence intervals and use the much faster converging mathematics of poker. I know that calling 3 cold with A8 is a hugely losing play. I know that playing any 2 suited is a losing proposition. And I know a lot of things more subtle than that. I can see the poker mistakes that my opponents make, and I know that I am winning money from them.

This confidence interval stuff has been blown way out of proportion.


Good luck.
Eric

[Ezcheeze]

Either you're beating your opponents or not, end of story. All you have to do is open your eyes and look for the good plays/mistakes you and your opponents make. From this you can make a decent guess as to your win rate. Thats it, thats all that matters, forget 250 gabillion hands or eleventy zillion % confidence, thats all bul1sh1t.

EIther you're beating htem or you're not and you can guess pretty easily whether you're a big/small loser, break even, big/small winner.

It's either that or being cheated, as long as you aren't being cheated then the above is all you need.

Either you know or you don't. Don't rely on statistics of something as errorful as winrate and be very skeptical of other poeple/players. I don't know what else to say.

-Ezcheeze