Re: discuss
 

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 & 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?"

Re: discuss
 

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

Re: discuss
 

no offense taken.

Re: discuss
 

[ 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

Re: btw
 

[ 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.

Re: discuss
 

[ 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.

You don\'t understand the math, Mike
 

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

Re: discuss
 

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