Re: Why I hate \"Look at my 500-SNG penis\" posts
 

Go to the "main index" and scroll all the way down.

Re: Why I hate \"Look at my 500-SNG penis\" posts
 

Irie,

2 questions. 1: How did you estimate the variability in your simulations? Your answer will depend on the noise.
2: What initial sample size did you start with to come up with the result of 3700? I can easily write an SPLUS script to validate your results.

Indy

Re: Why I hate \"Look at my 500-SNG penis\" posts
 

I've found that you can do similar experiments with rvg72's ROI simulator.

Re: Why I hate \"Look at my 500-SNG penis\" posts
 

[ QUOTE ]
I thought that the point of standard deviation WAS to determine your "luckiness" versus your "skills", essentially, based on results, what are the odds that it is a good or bad swing and what are the odds that it is mathematically where it should be.

We can do it for other subjective gambling endeavors such as a card counter in blackjack, why not something with a set buyin such as a SNG? It seems like we should be able to. Educate me on the subject, I'm very interested.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can look at your own post above and see why there's a deeper problem here (It touches on one of the most debateable issues in stats/probabilities at large, btw):

You say:

[ QUOTE ]
There is a way to figure this out. Let's say for the sake of argument that the average vig for sngs is 10%. So all players on average have a -10% ROI. Now, someone who knows how to calculate standard deviation, figure this out:

After how many sngs would being within let's say -8 to -10% happen 99.999% of the time?

After how many sngs would being within -20 to 0% happen 99.9999% of the time?

Let's say it was 2,000. And after 2,000 sngs you were showing a ROI of 15%. This is probably a good indicator that you are a winning player because statistically, you should overwhelmingly be between -20% and break even, so unless you're an incredible statistical anomaly, you are probably a winning player.


[/ QUOTE ]

Suppose you play a game that is in fact equivalent to flipping a non-biased coin, but you don't know that. It costs you $10 to play a game, paying 1:1. You play, say, 1000 games. Now suppose you are a "significant" winning player: you have 550 wins and 450 loses, for a $100 net win, which is basically 1% ROI. Surely according to a normal calculation with regard to how "confident" you can be about being a "winning player", you'll get some result that will be more in the direction of being a winner than a loser - but it won't make any sense, since the game is 0EV by defintion, only you don't know that, and was simply lucky.

More extreme example: suppose you play 1000 of these games, and win 650. This is, by definition, possible. You were very lucky. This has nothing to do with being a "winning player", of course. However, if you use some assumption (=belief) about this game being "beatable" in some way, then you are clearly a "winning player", a "good player", which is absurd.

Obviously, you can run hot enough to have 1000 straight wins. This is extremely improbable, but still, the fact that it's very improbable has nothing to do with what you might call the "actual" result of having 1000 straight wins, which by itself has _the same probability as any other *specific* result with a *specific sequence*_ in this game, and is just as unprobable, or probable. Now if you had such a run, you would believe with an extremely high level of confidence that you are a "winning player" in this game, a real master, but you'll be completely wrong, of course.

In fact, your mistake about your "true" ROI and confidence about being a "winning/losing" player, will grow as you'll be running hotter/colder.

In other words: according to a different (but legitimate) assumption with regard to your results, it is possible to interpret them as being simply nothing more than an indication for how lucky you were running, and nothing else. That is - getting to ANY conclusion about your confidence with regard to any "true ROI" of any kind, is impossible and absurd, according to this.

You'll have the same problem, theoretically, no matter how big is your sample, as long as it isn't "infinite".

Whenever you make any kind of calculation with regard to your confidence of being a winner, you are using some "hidden assumption/s" about the game you're playing. The results of the calculation you make _can not_ prove this assumption, however, many many people seem to be missing this point, by trying to do exactly that: using the results to prove the assumption.

....

This discussion is getting very theoretical, and might seem even absurd to some (although it isn't absurd at all!), but since this whole thread started with a theoretical notion, I think there's place for a somewhat different point of view as well.

Re: Why I hate \"Look at my 500-SNG penis\" posts
 

[ QUOTE ]
Go to the "main index" and scroll all the way down.

[/ QUOTE ]

thx

Re: Why I hate \"Look at my 500-SNG penis\" posts
 

[ QUOTE ]
Irie,

2 questions. 1: How did you estimate the variability in your simulations? Your answer will depend on the noise.
2: What initial sample size did you start with to come up with the result of 3700? I can easily write an SPLUS script to validate your results.

Indy

[/ QUOTE ]

(I ran the simulation for him) I assigned a 10% chance each to coming in first, second, or third and used the random number generator from java.util. For each of 41,000 virtual players, it simulated 500 STT's (deduct buy in from running total, roll the dice, add any money won to running total).

Re: Why I hate \"Look at my 500-SNG penis\" posts
 

My only comment is that when you do these analyses, you know how likely certain things are, and that those liklihoods are always strictly less than 1. A lot of people consider something like 95% to be 100%, but of course they are wrong (which is I think the essence of what you were trying to say). (Also, a lot of people don't even bother to do the statistics).

Re: Why I hate \"Look at my 500-SNG penis\" posts
 

Regardless of the #s, Irie makes a valid point. Its just story-telling at 500 SNGs. We don't need interim results unless the individual has prospectively defined success and futility stopping boundries for quitting poker.

Indy

Re: Why I hate \"Look at my 500-SNG penis\" posts
 

[ QUOTE ]
My only comment is that when you do these analyses, you know how likely certain things are, and that liklihoos is always strictly less than 1. A lot of people consider thing like 95% to be 100%, but of course they are wrong (which is I think the essence of what you were trying to say). (Also, a lot of people don't even bother to do the statistics).

[/ QUOTE ]

True, and I'd like to add that in some cases and according to some different assumptions, even this "95%" figure is "in fact" lower or much lower, and alternatively, low figures "should be" higher.

I'm using all those "" "" because this is a tricky subject, as any issue that has to do with "confidence" and "levels of belief".

Re: Why I hate \"Look at my 500-SNG penis\" posts
 

One more reply to this:

This gets at the heart of another big misconception in the world: that science proves things. A lot of people are ignorant that science consists of theories which are supported (or not) by experiments. There is no "LAW of Gravity," for instance, it is the "Theory of Gravity," which can (and has been to some extent) invalidated. (Clarification: Newtonian Gravity does not explain some observations. This resulted in the relativity theories. Newtonian gravity is a very good approximation in most of the cases humans have to deal with, but not entirely accurate. Relavativity could likewise be wrong in ways we have yet to discover.)