Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

I had a terrible run of cards with my pocket pairs earlier today during a 3 hour session (running 4 tables). I counted in PT around 40 pocket pairs that didn't hit sets on the flop. Not one during the entire session...I hit one or two or the flop or river and I had some high PP's hold up, so all was not lost.

I'm wondering how long some of you guys have gone w/o flopping sets. I haven't really been playing long enough to know how long those dry spells can go.

Anyway, I figured I'd have a nice run of sets in the near future and low and behold I sat down tonight and hit on my first 3 pocket pairs, one time flopping quads when I had 10-10 and the flop came 10-10-5. The other guy had 5-5 and we capped on each street earning me a nice sized pot [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

One common misconception about probability and statistics is that after a losing streak players think that they are "due" for a winning streak... whereas you are as equally likely to go on a losing streak as a winning streak (assuming you play perfectly 'average' poker).

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

I don't think I had any misconception at all. I was a math minor and took my share of stats courses, so I have a pretty solid understand of stats. In the long run in poker things always even out to their statistical probability. If you're right under 12% to flop a set or quads, then 0 out of 50 is an obvious lag and will have to be made up at some point.

The point of the post was to see how long others have gone without flopping a set not to discuss statistics.

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

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I don't think I had any misconception at all. I was a math minor and took my share of stats courses, so I have a pretty solid understand of stats. In the long run in poker things always even out to their statistical probability. If you're right under 12% to flop a set or quads, then 0 out of 50 is an obvious lag and will have to be made up at some point.

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The two bolded statements contradict one another.

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

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I don't think I had any misconception at all. I was a math minor and took my share of stats courses, so I have a pretty solid understand of stats. In the long run in poker things always even out to their statistical probability. If you're right under 12% to flop a set or quads, then 0 out of 50 is an obvious lag and will have to be made up at some point.

The point of the post was to see how long others have gone without flopping a set not to discuss statistics.

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Are you sure you were a statistics major? It is not guaranteed to make it up at some point, it will only regress to the mean. Your odds of flopping a set won't magically become 2-7.5 rather than 1-7.5 because you've gone 15 pocket pairs without hitting. You're just as likely to have a hot streak as a cold streak, but they are completely independant. You are just as likely to hit normally for a run and then run cold as you are to run hot.

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

Over the long run you will even out to around 12%...how am I misguided in that thinking?

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

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Over the long run you will even out to around 12%...how am I misguided in that thinking?

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The long run is very far away.

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

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Are you sure you were a statistics major? It is not guaranteed to make it up at some point, it will only regress to the mean. Your odds of flopping a set won't magically become 2-7.5 rather than 1-7.5 because you've gone 15 pocket pairs without hitting. You're just as likely to have a hot streak as a cold streak, but they are completely independant. You are just as likely to hit normally for a run and then run cold as you are to run hot.

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You're obviously not understanding what I meant. And for the record I was a math minor, not a stats major. Quite frankly, you guys are missing the basic understanding of mathmatical probability. If may take 50 hands or 500,000,000 hands, but you will end up at the statistical probability in the long run (no matter how far away that is). I will gladly set up a computer simulation 250k hands of so and I'd bet on the frequency of a flopped set or quads would be 10-12%.

I obviously wasn't expecting the improbability to fix itself over 200 hands...I don't think I ever implied that. I figured I would eventually hit a set or two and I did. However, I do think 40-50 hands is fair enough to raise an eyebrow to. Maybe I'm wrong in that thinking though...hence the original purpose of this post.

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

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Over the long run you will even out to around 12%...how am I misguided in that thinking?

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The long run is very far away.

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And the denominator gets pretty big, too. Let's say you went 100 PPs without flopping a set. The next 1,000,000 times you have a PP you flop a set 117,551 times, exactly the number you would expect with a true deck and random shuffles. Now your total is 117,551 flopped sets out of 1,000,100 PPs. You never made up the dry 100 PP streak, but your end results are damn close to the expected outcome (like 1/1000th of a percentile off).

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

it doesn't *have* to be made up, it is very likely that it will get closer to what the historical win percentage is after the same thing happens hundreds, thousands of times more though

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

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Quite frankly, you guys are missing the basic understanding of mathmatical probability.

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You are falling prey to the most widespread and common misunderstanding of probability -- often called the "Gambler's Fallacy" in the context of gambling.

The cards / dice / coin have no memory and never know that they needs to "make up" for a previous streak. If you flip an honest coin 20 times and it comes up heads each time, does the likelihood of it coming up tails on the next throw exceed 50%? Does the likelihood of hitting a streak that is lopsided in favor of tails increase?

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

If this is how you want to do it, this is how we will do it.

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You're obviously not understanding what I meant.

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You are misunderstanding what everyone else is telling you. This is clear from your OP and your subsequent replies. You seem to fail to understand that short runs like this can happen and they imply absolutely nothing about the future. Nothing. In the long run, a session of holding fifty (or any other number) pocket pairs without flopping a set is nothing because 50/N ---> 0 as N ---> infinity.

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And for the record I was a math minor, not a stats major.

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I am a Math PhD student.

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Quite frankly, you guys are missing the basic understanding of mathmatical probability.

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I just got an A in the third quarter of graduate level probability.

Now please, go look up The Gambler's Fallacy and stfu.

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

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And the denominator gets pretty big, too. Let's say you went 100 PPs without flopping a set. The next 1,000,000 times you have a PP you flop a set 117,551 times, exactly the number you would expect with a true deck and random shuffles. Now your total is 117,551 flopped sets out of 1,000,100 PPs. You never made up the dry 100 PP streak, but your end results are damn close to the expected outcome (like 1/1000th of a percentile off).

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This is what I was implying in later posts...sorry if that was presented poorly. I certainly understand now why you were lead to believe otherwise after re-reading my posts.

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

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And the denominator gets pretty big, too. Let's say you went 100 PPs without flopping a set. The next 1,000,000 times you have a PP you flop a set 117,551 times, exactly the number you would expect with a true deck and random shuffles. Now your total is 117,551 flopped sets out of 1,000,100 PPs. You never made up the dry 100 PP streak, but your end results are damn close to the expected outcome (like 1/1000th of a percentile off).

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This is what I was implying in later posts...sorry if that was presented poorly. I certainly understand now why you were lead to believe otherwise after re-reading my posts.

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I defer to Jason on matters of probability. Your posts in this thread led an impartial reader more towards a view that you harbored a fundamental misunderstanding of probability than that you harbored an inability to communicate clearly your views.

But that should be no big deal. We all make mistakes; none of us knows everything; when you make a mistake here you get corrected -- and YOU win because you've learned something new. Don't let the fact that you misunderstood or miscommunicated keep you from speaking out or arguing for your view of things -- you are generally either confirmed in your view of things (with great detail on why your view is correct) and thus learn something valuable, or you gain greater insight into an issue . . . in which case you learn something valuable. Either way, you win.

Welcome to the forums!

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

Thanks. I didn't want to come off sounding like that, but I definately see how you got that impression. Now, had I said something along the lines of: "Well, I haven't flopped a set in 8 times so I better 4 bet preflop because I have to hit this time" then I'd expect to be mauled [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Flopping Sets Dry Spells
 

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I'm wondering how long some of you guys have gone w/o flopping sets.

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A long [censored] time. [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]