Pokernomics.com: A Major Project Collecting Hand Histories

[vinyard]

[ QUOTE ]
Hmmmm.

I sent a long email to this economist guy first explaining to him about chip and dollar EV models and fold equity etc etc and said this would be a far better thing to investigate than there original idea for analysis which was poker luck or skill (duh) or sumthing equaly obvious/dumb which was on the freakonomics website about a 2 months ago.

I wanted him to look at current models and explained in depth some of the issues sorrunding SNG theory.

I never got a response for this email, but now this happens.

Nice to see that your ideas have been ripped off without even a thankyou for your input. Though that is how the world of academia works.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah. To be fair when I was in undergrad there (I actually completed an Economics degree as well but at the time you were allowed to "double major") there was tons of chatter about poker re: game theory and the like. Don;t get me wrong I am sure he stole your idea but its something that has been perculating there for a while. With the poker explosion and Leavitt essentially being a "pop" economist it was inevitable that his "academic" work and poker would intersect.

[The once and future king]

No, they had expressed an idea to study poker, but couched it in terms that came over as totaly naive and dumb. They wanted HHs to see if Pros realy had any skill to influence the outcome.

I wrote to them to point out and explain how dumb this was and how there are more intresting things for an economist to look at such as models that translate chipEV to DollarEV. lo and behold a few months later I see they have changed there whole mode of inquiry. Coincidnece maybe maybe not.

[dchandler321]

This is an academic study and is being run out of a University. The results will eventually be made public. More information about what hypotheses we will be testing are available on the pokernomics webpage. The project is still in its infancy so there isnt much more specific information to give.

[45suited]

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Anyone who submits 10,000+ of their own hands will receive a free analysis of their play. People submitting more than 30,000 hands will receive an analysis and a signed copy of his New York Times bestselling book "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything". If you submit a hand history with more than 50,000 hands you will also receive a Freakonomics t-shirt.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, when he sells his book, is he going to accept T-shirts as payment? If you're going to spam the forum, at least offer money in exchange for the HHs which will be used for a book that will be sold for profit.

Better yet, pay 2+2 for advertising like real advertisers do.

[Ixnert]

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Given the mainstream appeal of his previous work, combined with the fact that his new work is on one of the biggest trends in American society, your claim that this is for academic rather than commercial use is utter and complete poppycock. I don't expect any more from the Economics department at the old alma mater; the department has been an embarrassment to the rest of the University for as long as I can remember.


[/ QUOTE ]

Leaving aside the original thread topic, you must be using a definition of "embarrassment" with which I'm not familiar.

Don't get me wrong -- the UofC will not get a dollar of my money (in terms of alumni contributions) any time soon, as a result of the honestly embarrassing decision to cripple the Common Core. And the academic focus of the entire institution seems to be on a downswing since the beginning of Sonnenschein's presidency. But to claim that one of the foremost groups of economic scholars in the world (a claim which I don't think you can honestly object to) is an embarrassment to the University...is, to say the least, an extraordinary statement.

(In any event, more relevantly to the thread, the study here is being done under the auspices of the business school, not the econ department; they're mostly separate organizations, though Levitt may be one of the handful that have joint appointments in both departments.)

[fnord_too]

Any particular type of hands you want? (That is ring game, MTT, STT, limit, no limit, etc?)

[wuwei]

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Any particular type of hands you want? (That is ring game, MTT, STT, limit, no limit, etc?)

[/ QUOTE ]

Looks like they want any hands played for real money. There is more information about what they are seeking on the website.

[eastbay]

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Any particular type of hands you want? (That is ring game, MTT, STT, limit, no limit, etc?)

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The fact that they don't specify is worrying that they have any real clue what they're doing.

eastbay

[gumpzilla]

While it is quite likely that they would try and put a book together, I also think that there's a decent chance if they really are doing this academically that the results will be published in journals which are pretty widely accessible (though also not free). I also think that it would be interesting to see people do some kind of large scale analysis of this data, just to see what they're looking for and how they look for it. As such, I think this is pretty interesting and I don't really consider it spam.

[gumpzilla]

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The fact that they don't specify is worrying that they have any real clue what they're doing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point, but once they have the data couldn't they presumably try a bunch of different things and figure out what works? It's not like the data goes bad. Also, unless you think that the researchers are going to do something sneaky with your data, I don't see what this costs contributors except for whatever small amount of time is necessary to transmit the relevant information.