Re: Okay, I\'ll go first!
 

Hi EasyE,

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Yes, it's not the best use of the concept, but I would be willing to lay odds that, all other things being equal, when you flip heads 50 times in a row, I'd wager that you will flip fewer heads than tails over the next 50 tosses.

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Actually, all other things being equal, if you flip heads 50 times in succession, there's a significant possibility that the coin is somehow weighted -- albeit perhaps in ways you can't easily detect -- and I'd be expecting a greater than 50% of heads over the next N (very large) tosses.

Cris

Re: how good can you be at tournament poker?
 

Very nice post. I agree with you on this. Tournaments have one other function besides winning a boat loads of cash is Fame and Fame only. People dream (I know I do) about winning a Major. But my odds are not good because the fields are so large. For a Pro to make to the final table next year will be near to imposible. Look at this years 6+ players won their seat through the internet. DH the only real major Pro headliner there.

I feel players plucking down $10k to play are insane no matter how good you are (or think you are for that matter) are really throwing your money away. Maybe you'll make the money and get your money back, but why not put the $10k in a NL ring game. You have a better shot to double or triple you buyin.

I think the only time playing in a big tourney for a Rec. Player like myself is to win it though a Super. One that pays a vacation or something like the UB Aruba tourney. Now that is a great Vaca, free, and you play poker, Yehaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Paul I think you make great points and keep these coming.

Big O

Re: how good can you be at tournament poker?
 

I, for one, am honored to have both started the initial thread that got PP going on this topic, AND for riling him up with my deadly hack math!

Once again, I agree with 99% of what you say,(hell, i'm experincing the bad side of luck in my game right now..), but your post seems to insinuate that results don't matter that much, except for long term(right?). Well, PH had long term results. Maybe it's an aberration. Hell, for that matter then, maybe Doyle's whole career is an aberration of a lifetime of good luck. I don't know

What I do know is what my new fantasy sport is! I will be tailoring a points system for this if one is not already made for next year's WSOP.

Re: how good can you be at tournament poker?
 

Hi Paul,

I think most people significantly overestimate the skill difference between winners and losers, in almost every kind of sporting endeavor.

For example, consider the end-of-season scoring averages for PGA tour pros. In most years, the difference between the scoring leader and the 126th player will typically be right around two strokes per round. The scoring leader will often (although not always) be the money leader for that year. The 126th player will probably have lost his tour card and go back to Q-School.

Similarly, consider the effect of just one or two injuries on an NFL football team. With only 16 games in the season, one or two significant injuries will take the "best" team in the league out of playoff contention, because the skill difference between the "best" and "worst" teams just isn't all that great. For most of the also-rans, the difference between making and missing the playoffs comes down to five or six key plays over the course of a season: a touchdown pass dropped in this game, a blown coverage that gives up a touchdown in that one, a missed field goal here, a fourth-quarter drive-killing penalty there. The margin really is that small.

The same is true in tournament poker. While I won't go to the same extent as Tosh and say that there's no way to draw any conclusions on less than 1000 tournaments, neither do I agree with the "results speak for themselves" crowd.

Chaos and statistical theory predict a substantial clumping factor in random events. If you roll a six-sided die often enough, sooner or later you'll roll a streak of 6s. If you see only a small sample containing that streak, you might conclude that 6 is the "best" number. A poker tournament, by nature, takes a tiny sample of the players' careers. In most tournaments, the finalists will play fewer than 500 hands from start to finish. Even in this year's WSOP Main Event, I doubt that was much greater than 2000 hands. That is a tiny sample in poker.

So yes, I agree that the luck factor is significantly underrated in tournament outcomes. The good players need a bit less "luck" than the poor players, but every tournament winner will have gotten lucky to win.

Cris

Re: Okay, I\'ll go first!
 

[ QUOTE ]
Actually, all other things being equal, if you flip heads 50 times in succession, there's a significant possibility that the coin is somehow weighted -- albeit perhaps in ways you can't easily detect. I'd be expecting a greater than 50% of heads over the next N (very large) tosses.

Cris

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Why require N to be very large? You have a pretty freaking good bet on the 51st flip alone.

Once you accept there's a nonzero chance that the coin is unfair, then: either it IS unfair, or you've just witnessed a one in 562-trillion odds event: like winning a one in 24-million lottery twice in a row. I think you can inch your estimation of the likelihood of another heads a tad up from 50%.

Seriously, forget about the math. If you knew you weren't being set up or hustled somehow and saw a coin flipped the same way fifty times in a row, wouldn't you be willing to give some pretty freaking long odds that it's going the same way next time too? I should hope so! There are a lot of potential gambling fallacies swirling around this subject matter, but predicting the future based on the past is only a fallacy when the events are actually random. In "real life" you're supposed to be somewhat results oriented -- otherwise known as the scientific method.

Re: Okay, I\'ll go first!
 

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So, Dan can be expected to make every final table from here on in?

Yes, it's not the best use of the concept, but I would be willing to lay odds that, all other things being equal, when you flip heads 50 times in a row, I'd wager that you will flip fewer heads than tails over the next 50 tosses.

And yes, I know I'd be taking the worst of this bet... and I'd still gamble on it.

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I'll take you up on this wager. I know of a site with a simulated online dice roll...we could set the die to only two numbers..and when it came up one of the two numbers comes up many times in a row, we could then make the bet for the next several rolls. What odds exactly are you willing to lay? With this online simulator, we can run thousands of rolls per day. We can transfer all money either through Party, Stars, or through an online service like paypal. Up for it?

Re: Okay, I\'ll go first!
 

[ QUOTE ]
If you knew you weren't being set up or hustled somehow and saw a coin flipped the same way fifty times in a row, wouldn't you be willing to give some pretty freaking long odds that it's going the same way next time too? I should hope so!

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If we accept your parameter that "we're not being hustled" (ie. its a 50/50 shot on each individual flip of eother heads or tails), then the second part of your statement makes no sense.

Re: how good can you be at tournament poker?
 

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I feel players plucking down $10k to play are insane no matter how good you are (or think you are for that matter) are really throwing your money away.

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Not really.
Consider that many of the top-name players finished in the money and at least got their buy-in back (or maybe a little more).

Anyone who finished in the top 225 got their buy-in back I think.
If you finished high enough to 'only' got $10-$20k, well, that still isn't THAT bad for a week's work.

Plus the excitement of being involved in the biggest poker event EVER.

I just think it's wrong to assume that not reaching the final-table constitutes failure.


Other thoughts -

Paul - thanks for a very insightful post. I will also be checking out the linked article.

Cris - Great post regarding other sports. right on the money. The line between great and mediocre is much closer in most sports then many people imagine.
look at all the 95 win teams in baseball compared with all the 91 win teams.
etc etc etc. Your golf example is good too and probably slightly closer to the poker-tournament construct.



My own situation - As some of you know, last week I decided to enter a $50k guaranteed online tourney for $100 and I lucked my way into winning the whole thing for $12.5k.
Not too shabby for a guy who isn't that good of a tourney player who makes his living grinding away at the 3/6 tables.
I didn't have any major suck-outs until it was heads-up (where the river saved me a couple times) and I thought I played pretty well. But I also came back from the short-stack with 16 players left so there obviously had to be some luck involved.
My greatest amount of luck came from the fact that nobody delivered any significant bad-beats on me.
All my AQ's held up against AJ's and so on.


Am i improving as a tournament player? Heck yes. I'm much better now then I ever was before.
Is my win evidence that I am pretty damn good at this stuff?
Nope. Not by a long-shot.
I think I MIGHT be good enough to break-even on these things (or have slight positive expectation) in the long-run but certainly not much more than that.
At least not until Greg and Dan's 2+2 tourney-books come out!!

Re: how good can you be at tournament poker?
 

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most people significantly overestimate the skill difference between winners and losers, in almost every kind of sporting endeavor

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This is what makes baseball betting so good! The favorites almost always get overbet skewing the lines often toward the underdogs. The talent gap between "good" teams and "bad" teams is minimal and most teams hover in the gray murky middle, Once in a while you have some pathetic outliers like Arizona this season or Detroit last season. Or ocassionally teams like the Mariners or Yankees of a few years back that had +.700 seasons. But these are rare instances. But for the most part the very best teams win less than 60% of the time and the bad teams still win at least 40% of the time. You would never know it though by how the lines can skew. But people want to pick a winner so they are willing to lay more odds than they should on a slight favorite.

Re: Okay, I\'ll go first!
 

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If we accept your parameter that "we're not being hustled" (ie. its a 50/50 shot on each individual flip of eother heads or tails)

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A !-> B

You're not being hustled. That means nobody is sitting here influencing outcomes somehow to make you pursue a bad bet, or rigging the coin toss repeatedly in one direction until they can get you to bet in the other, etc, It surely doens't mean the coin is fair! It should be obvious that the coin is not fair.

The whole point is that the coin isn't fair.

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then the second part of your statement makes no sense.

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It makes sense to me but you're not the first person to suggest that I've got brain-matter issues.