Re: Taking a break from Poker - LONG & Low Content
 

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[img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] I don't have to worry about the IRS yet because I only cashed out small $s. Most of the money I have is still in my account and you don't have to worry about it until you cash out!

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As far as I know, this isn't true, and it isn't treated like capital gains. You might want to ask an accountant before you do anything, especially if you're talking about a significant amount of money. I don't think the IRS will go after you for a couple thousand, but better safe than sorry.

Good luck.

Re: Taking a break from Poker - LONG & Low Content
 

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some of the best tournament players I know have gone strings of 50+ tournaments without cashing.

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If you know 10 players that fit your criteria with an average ITM of 15% (good ones are higher), then I bet they would have to play more than 10,000 tournaments each for there to be a greater than 10% chance for this to occur.

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Your math seems to be off here. The odds of a player with a 15% ITM going 0-50 on his next 50 tournaments is around .03%, or it should happen around once every 3000 or so tournaments. Or if you play 5 tournaments a day, it should happen about once every few years. I know at least 10 very successful professional online tournament players who play about that volume, so collectively, it should happen to a couple of them just about every year. Of course there are other factors, like playing worse after a long slide, getting frustrated, etc. Maybe those were present in some of the situations I have in mind, I don't know, but each of the players eventually recovered and continued to have great success afterwards.

Re: Taking a break from Poker - LONG & Low Content
 

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some of the best tournament players I know have gone strings of 50+ tournaments without cashing.

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If you know 10 players that fit your criteria with an average ITM of 15% (good ones are higher), then I bet they would have to play more than 10,000 tournaments each for there to be a greater than 10% chance for this to occur.

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Your math seems to be off here. The odds of a player with a 15% ITM going 0-50 on his next 50 tournaments is around .03%, or it should happen around once every 3000 or so tournaments. Or if you play 5 tournaments a day, it should happen about once every few years. I know at least 10 very successful professional online tournament players who play about that volume, so collectively, it should happen to a couple of them just about every year. Of course there are other factors, like playing worse after a long slide, getting frustrated, etc. Maybe those were present in some of the situations I have in mind, I don't know, but each of the players eventually recovered and continued to have great success afterwards.

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This actually turns out to be a semi-interesting probability question.

After I posted that I then ran the numbers on the % chance of 50 loses in a row if you just play 50 tournaments like you did. For an itm of 15% that's obv just 0.85^50 like you said.

And I guess it isn't anymore complicated than that value multiplied by (3000-50) for the % chance of getting a run of 50 losses in a row? (It seems like it should be but I can't find it.)

What's also interesting is that an increase of a 1% point in itm% decreases this 50 loss run by a factor of two. I guess not suprising considering the exponent.

I would imagine most that call them professionals are better than 15%.

http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/9...mage001ee3.gif

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/446...mage001qo5.gif

Re: Taking a break from Poker - LONG & Low Content
 

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I would imagine most that call them professionals are better than 15%.

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Actually, this is very dependent on style, and 15% is fairly conservative. Most very successful online tournament players have ITM between 11 to 17%. Try looking at Official Poker Rankings and just click on some of the highest rated players. Very few of them are at or above 15% -- and remember these are the guys that have been running very good!

Re: Taking a break from Poker - LONG & Low Content
 

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[img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] I don't have to worry about the IRS yet because I only cashed out small $s. Most of the money I have is still in my account and you don't have to worry about it until you cash out!

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As far as I know, this isn't true, and it isn't treated like capital gains. You might want to ask an accountant before you do anything, especially if you're talking about a significant amount of money. I don't think the IRS will go after you for a couple thousand, but better safe than sorry.

Good luck.

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It depends on what you mean about the IRS "going after" you.

If there is something questionable, but the amount is not that great, they may ask about that one item, and ask you to change your figures or the way you did something.

However, you are right that something involving relatively small amounts of money won't trigger a full audit. The time and expense to do a full audit would only be triggered by a large enough amount of money at stake, and/or something like deliberate tax fraud.

One thing that can trigger an audit is something occuring outside the normal ranges of your profession. For example, a few thousand in travel expenses would be normal for a traveling salesman, but might trigger an automatic audit in the case of a third grade teacher.

A gambler making a couple thousand dollars would not be considered unusual enough to by itself trigger an audit.

Re: Taking a break from Poker - LONG & Low Content
 

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some of the best tournament players I know have gone strings of 50+ tournaments without cashing.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you know 10 players that fit your criteria with an average ITM of 15% (good ones are higher), then I bet they would have to play more than 10,000 tournaments each for there to be a greater than 10% chance for this to occur.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your math seems to be off here. The odds of a player with a 15% ITM going 0-50 on his next 50 tournaments is around .03%, or it should happen around once every 3000 or so tournaments. Or if you play 5 tournaments a day, it should happen about once every few years. I know at least 10 very successful professional online tournament players who play about that volume, so collectively, it should happen to a couple of them just about every year. Of course there are other factors, like playing worse after a long slide, getting frustrated, etc. Maybe those were present in some of the situations I have in mind, I don't know, but each of the players eventually recovered and continued to have great success afterwards.

[/ QUOTE ]

This actually turns out to be a semi-interesting probability question.

After I posted that I then ran the numbers on the % chance of 50 loses in a row if you just play 50 tournaments like you did. For an itm of 15% that's obv just 0.85^50 like you said.

And I guess it isn't anymore complicated than that value multiplied by (3000-50) for the % chance of getting a run of 50 losses in a row? (It seems like it should be but I can't find it.)

What's also interesting is that an increase of a 1% point in itm% decreases this 50 loss run by a factor of two. I guess not suprising considering the exponent.

I would imagine most that call them professionals are better than 15%.

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/446...mage001qo5.gif

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what is that second graph meant to mean, what is 10000% in this context?

Re: Taking a break from Poker - LONG & Low Content
 

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what is that second graph meant to mean, what is 10000% in this context?

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The graph more highlights the cutoff (at 100%) what the ITM% where on average you can expect a run of 50 buyins.

I haven't thought it through, but if you have a number like 1000% that would mean (on average) at the ITM% you could expect 10 stretches of runs of 50 no cash tournies.

Re: Taking a break from Poker - LONG & Low Content
 

[ QUOTE ]

This actually turns out to be a semi-interesting probability question.

After I posted that I then ran the numbers on the % chance of 50 loses in a row if you just play 50 tournaments like you did. For an itm of 15% that's obv just 0.85^50 like you said.

And I guess it isn't anymore complicated than that value multiplied by (3000-50) for the % chance of getting a run of 50 losses in a row? (It seems like it should be but I can't find it.)

What's also interesting is that an increase of a 1% point in itm% decreases this 50 loss run by a factor of two. I guess not suprising considering the exponent.

I would imagine most that call them professionals are better than 15%.
]

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It's a question that has a lot of statistic signifance, and your proposed solution is completely off. See http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Run.html

There are statistical tests that give easy-to-calculate approximations but I need to go to sleep so I am not looking it up ina book.