SNG statistics

[PartySNGer]

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Jesus Christ, people. Stop commenting on a 150 sng sample.

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It's worse than that, because he doesn't have a sample size of 150. The OP said that he was playing mostly 33s and 55s. So what he has here is maybe 3 to 5 much smaller samples of different games, all lumped together and treated as if they were all the same thing.

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Thank you for this analysis.

[Frinkenstein]

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Maybe I've misunderstood something, but I used a 95% confidence interval to calculate that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_interval

<p - z sqrt(p(1-p)/n), p + z sqrt(p(1-p)/n)> = <.19 - 1.96 sqrt(.19(1-.19)/150), .19 + 1.96 sqrt(.19(1-.19)/150)> = <.13, .25>

Don't you think he's got any idea wether he's a winning player when he's played 150 SnGs with a ROI of 19%?

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Yeah, when I started playing SNG's I had a 95% confidence of having an ROI greater than 20% after 100 games.

100 (i.e. after 200) games later my ROI was -5%. The confidence interval does not capture the variability of SNG play. either that or I beat the odds and went on a huge losing streak. Probably a bit of both.

[Oxy]

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play another 2850 and come back!

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FYP

[DeuceSeven]

Is it good if my itm is 100% and roi is 300% over 3 games?

[Sierra]

I won my first SNG moving up at 77's last night.

Gave my two weeks notice this morning.

F-U sample size.

[benfranklin]

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Well I have no idea what that crazy math means, but I can say that I'm a winning player and I can easily go over 150 sngs with a negative roi or a ridiculously inflated one.

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Yeah, but if you split up all your SnGs in 150-SnGs-chunks, 95% of the chuncks' ROI should be between 13% and 25% if your true ROI is 19%. If you've played thousands of SnGs, of course many of the chuncks will have a ROI that is below or above that confidence interval.

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Nonsense. This is true if you are measuring a physical process such as counting coin flips or weighing widgets. These things have independent observations. The same is not true when attempting to quantify human behaviour.

The result of a SnG is not independent of those immediately preceeding it. I hereby posit the STTF First Law of SnG Dynamics: the law of inertia. A player on a heater tends to remain on a heater, and a player on a downswing tends to go on tilt. In other words, long runs of winning or losing tend to be self-reenforcing, and will be greater in magnitude and duration than runs of heads versus tails in a coin flipping games.

A sample size of 150 will certainly give you a statistically significant result to decide if a coin is unbiased. Even if the OP had a sample size of 150 (and he doesn't), empirical evidence here indicates that would not be large enough to average out the psychological effect and the resultant long swings up and down.

Experienced students of the game here have concluded that a sample size of 1000 will average out the mind swings in the game and give a good estimate of true skills. This is a subjective analysis that you will not find in any stat text, but one that stands the test of STTF time.

[Hakon]

Okay, thanks for the clearification. The tilt thing is obvious, as we play worse when we lose a lot. But I don't understand the causes of the heater, do we actually play better when we win a lot?

[benfranklin]

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But I don't understand the causes of the heater, do we actually play better when we win a lot?

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Pros talk about playing their "A" game, and recognize that they don't always do so. If you just won a few SnGs, you are more likely to be playing your "A" game because you have confidence in your skills and your decisions. You don't fold a good hand because you are afraid of yet another bad beat, and you don't bet a bad hand because the cards have been running crappy and you are "over due". You are thinking more clearly because you aren't feeling sorry for yourself or worrying about your shrinking bankroll.

[TruFloridaGator]

LOCK THREAD, NOW.....AHHHHHHH!

[Slim Pickens]

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I hereby posit the STTF First Law of SnG Dynamics: the law of inertia. A player on a heater tends to remain on a heater, and a player on a downswing tends to go on tilt. In other words, long runs of winning or losing tend to be self-reenforcing, and will be greater in magnitude and duration than runs of heads versus tails in a coin flipping games.

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I agree with this for downswings. The problem with heater is the feeling of invincibility. Ever go on a heater and think "I can call all-in on the bubble with 66 and deep stacks because I know my opponent is pushing crap and I've been winning every coin flip anyway?" I know I play my best on a totally even keel: no tilting, no rushing. It keeps my mind as free from distractions external to the probabilistic considerations of the game as possible. I suspect most people are similar. Also, no heater persists without an occasional reinforcement of bad behavior, a feature that separates poker from games of more pure skill. Any time a bad behavior, a -EV call that works out in the short term, is reinforced, a player's game devolves slightly.