EV in the short-term: conceptual post (Boz don't read) :)

[DavidC]

Hey guys.

I've been thinking about something recently.

We all play a lot of poker. If we call a gutshot with incorrect odds, this is reflected in our long-term results. We argue that the short-term results don't matter because in the long term our results will match our EV, and for us, this is true.

However, let's say that I was new to poker, and I called 5 gutshots and hit all of them in an evening. The statistical EV was negative by $X amount, cumulative.

Would you say that I lost $X? I wouldn't, if one of the following (or something like it) were to occur:

1) I quit poker for the rest of my life after that session.

If I quit poker this evening, all that matters is experienced value (i.e. what happened). Of course, this only matters once I stop playing: while I'm playing I should make correct EV decisions, but that doesn't really matter as long as the cards land in my favour.

2) I picked up a book and learn how not to play like a fish.

If you change your play in such a manner as to not repeat a costly error, it doesn't matter how much that error cost you in EV in the past, just how much it DID cost you (in experienced value). You've essentially plugged that long-term leak, and frozen the results of that leak to the real world, as opposed to the mathematical world that we play poker in.

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My buddy pointed out something to me, too.

If you're a B&M player, your swings can last a LONG time (maybe half a year to a year, yes, that long). Therefore if going on a downswing causes you to stay in your apartment for longer than you should, when you're trying to buy a house, the difference in personal net worth accumulation that you would have achieved while in the house is a REAL cost of a downswing.

The same is true if you were to use a line of credit as your bankroll. Your downswings would have a real cost, in the amount of interest charged to you. This would basically cut into your BB/100, until you were rolling yourself.

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So how does this apply to us? Well, I guess it doesn't, but I'm kinda into useless math stuff in poker, so I posted it... Again, thanks for your tolerance. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]