I now understand the significance of statistical insignificance

[Pubknight]

I'm primarily a limit player, but due to the insistence of my friends that "limit sucks", I decided to give nl sng's a shot.

Did a 30x buy in deposit on Pokerstars, with the intent of playing $5+.5 sngs until I figure out what I'm doing, or increase bankroll enough to move to $10+$1's.

I track my limit games religiously, and carried over the same to sngs... essentially monitoring # of tourneys entered, buyin, placing, prize money, all the basics.

My bankroll was my gauge... if it was going up, I was doing ok, if not, then... not.

After reading this forum, I decided to start doing a bit more crunching, calculating ROI and ITM, and what I found initially was a bit disturbing.

After approximately 50 sngs, I had an ITM % of 51% (that's good), with a ROI of 11% (not so good). The reason was a disproportionate amount of 3rd place finishes, of the 25 tourneys where I had placed in the money, I had about 6 1sts, 6 2nds and 13 3rds.*

So, now I was bothered.
Did I suck?
Could I not close the deal?
Do I have the blessed ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Additional reading here indicated that you can't really trust your stats with such a small number of sngs... so I decided to push on. Not as confident, perhaps a bit humbled, but pushing on nonetheless.

Played 4 sngs last night, finished out of the money on one, 1st in 2, and 2nd in 1... the net effect of which pushed my ROI up to the low 30%'s*

What's my point?
Statistical significance is significant.
Until you really have enough data from which to do an analysis, you could very well 'over analyze'.

Don't put too much stake in any findings you uncover for a short run, as just a few different results can completely change those findings.

In short... resist the temptation to fix what ain't broke.

I realize my sample is still insignificant... so for the next while I'm going to simplify my barometer... is my bankroll going up, or not?

Long and ramblish... but if I try and describe this stuff to other people, they look at me like I need therapy.

Thanks for reading.

*all numbers are approximate due to my going from memory (spreadsheet is at home)

[jonoo]

just wondering what ROI means

[pukenpete]

ROI = return on investment
= net winnings / total cost of tournaments expressed as a percent

[knightunner]

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just wondering what ROI means

[/ QUOTE ]


Return on investment
~knight