How does only looking at showdown hands bias your sample?

[poincaraux]

(First of all, I think I must just suck at searching today, because this must have been discussed here before. Please feel free to point me at older threads and tell me how to search better.)

I'm a NL newbie, and I could certainly use some help on my hand-reading skills. It seems like one easy way to start is to datamine a bunch of hands, select the ones that go to showdown, break things up by position and action (limp, miniraise, raise, re-raise, call, X-reraise, X-call, etc.) and look at the distribution of hands. I'll start with pre-flop hands/action. Obviously, I'm going to be mostly restricted to hands that go to showdown. How can I expect that to bias my results?

[JoshuaD]

You're better off just playing for a bit. Nothing beats experience.

[poincaraux]

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You're better off just playing for a bit. Nothing beats experience.

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I'm doing that too.

[elmitchbo]

the search function is rather weak and hard to use.

what exactly do you mean by hand reading?

[jukofyork]

I think I just asked the same question as you, but in a different context here

Again if this has been discussed b4, any refs to old posts would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance - Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[poincaraux]

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the search function is rather weak and hard to use.

what exactly do you mean by hand reading?

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I'm trying to start simple here. I'd like to ask questions like: Joe Internet Poker min-raised UTG. It's folded around to me in the BB. What's a likely distribution of hands for Joe?

As I play more and more, I'll get a better idea of this just from playing and paying attention. Then again, my intuition might easily lead me astray .. I might selective remember a subset of hands, etc. It would be nice to get some sort of a check on my intuition by looking at a bunch of mined hands. Of course, most of the information I'd be able to use would come from showdown hands, and I want to know how that will bias my results.

Thanks,

-poincaraux

I think you are going to miss a lot of hands that were chasing draws and folded when they didn't hit the river, PPs that are scared off by overcards, and so on.

People *usually* (I say that while cringing....) show down at least something on the river- so your sample may leave out a lot of drawing hands that people play a lot pre-flop but don't show down.

99 percent of all statistics are misleading including this one. As a newbie, focus on position first. That K9 suited looks good but not UTG. I have followed several thousand statistics just to observe the comparison of any change. After 3000 hands or so any one percent change means you are doing something different. Showdown stats can be skewed by winning two or three sitngos because you an showdown a hundred hands per hour and its like a crapshoot. The only statistic that counts is the dollar swing. If your bankroll goes down consistently, fast or slow, you are making major mistakes. If it rollecoasters you are making major mistakes. Not in a week or two, but over thousands of hands. IMHO stats mean little. Some strong players probably have a under 50 show down and some have 60+%. IT depends on your style, and the games you pick. If i am in a schooling room, which I love, I play lots of losing hands but gtf out with inuition as coin said that is just experience. Just watch those other players and dont judge them too quickly. I have been judged as the fish after 10 orbits or so and then killed the table many times. Well hi everyone, I have been lurking quite a bit but this is what I was looking for. The board makes you think and rethink what is important. Statistics may be very important, but very easy to misinterpret.