80/20 rule for Poker

[That guy]

In business, a common benchmark is that 80% of your profits come from the top 20% of your customers.

see http://www.1000ventures.com/business...principle.html
for a nice little chart...

In poker, I think this would be even more skewed.

Discuss

[jtr]

I liked this part of the page best:

"80/20 Analysis, applied inappropriately and in linear way, can also lead to the innocent astray - you need constantly to be vigilant against false logic."

[mike1270]

wow
i was just thinking about the 80/20 rule in poker. i wrote a post about overlay and pot odds while thinking of this concept(didn't mention the 80/20 rule). how much of an edge or overlay is enough???

if 80% of poker profit comes from 20% of the hands you play then folding ~80% preflop makes sense.(assuming we are playing holdem) but if we apply this rule to post flop--80% of post flop profit comes from only 20% of the flops we see--right??

well the 80/20 relationship is only an example of the a disproportionate relationship between input(hands played) and outputs(poker profit). for an example it isn't uncommon to find a company that earns 95% of its its profit from only 5% of its products or services. in this case the rule is 95/5. anyway has anyone thought about what these numbers are for poker????



thanks

[That guy]

lets looks at the real statistics:

http://www.pokerroom.com/games/evsta...hp?order=value

using this as a guide, 90% of the +EV comes from the top 9% of hands.

[The Truth]

are you refering to the poker sites income, or to our income as players?

[That guy]

I was referring to us as players but it could be true for poker sites as well...

[mike1270]

hmmm
well i looked at the link and EV # and come up with something a little different

1) 100% of +EV comes from the top 40 of 169 hands. or 100/24--100% of EV comes from 24% of the hands

2) if we apply the 80/20 to the only the hands that have a + EV we see that 80% of the total + EV comes from the top 13 hands

i have my doubts about the EV stats but i am really interested in post flop play and deciding how much of an edge do i need to continue with a hand. i was wondering how the 80/20 concept might or not apply to play on the flop. does 80% of my profit come from only 20% of the flops that i see?? any thoughts about this????

[waffle]

From the page:
[ QUOTE ]

The 80/20 numbers are only a metaphor and a useful benchmark. The real relationship may be more or less unbalanced than 80/20.


[/ QUOTE ]

All this 'principle' really states is that a small number of causes heavily effect results, um, sometimes. Using the 80/20 rule to justify a percentage of hands played is comedy. Figuring out X and Y pairs for the statement "X% of our profit comes from Y% of our hands (preflop)" does not help us improve as players.

Poker players already know the lesson that the 80/20 rule teaches: Some decisions have a larger impact on your overall earn than others. It's not worth debating a very close decision in a rare circumstance if you are making other mistakes that occur much more often or that are much more costly. (like routinely coldcalling raises with marginal holdings or habitually folding large pots for a small bet on the river, respectively.)

[Reef]

[ QUOTE ]


2) if we apply the 80/20 to the only the hands that have a + EV we see that 80% of the total + EV comes from the top 13 hands


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know as fact about this. All I have to say, is check out how much of your overall profit comes from AA

[mshalen]

If you read the book 80/20 by Richard Koch the author goes into great detail how to apply the 80/20 theory to corporate situations but warns that it is only the first step in a process of analysis. I would hope that in poker we all know which card combinations will yield the greatest profit (duh AA or 93o) but if you examine such events as cold calling, profit when limping with monsters versus raising, positional raises ...you should find those -EV things that we do but think are +EV. This is where the 80/20 rule is usefull ie 75% of the time I limp in late position with KK i get drawn out by other players.