Physicist Examines Tournament Statistics in Phys. Let.
 

The layman's article at

http://www.physorg.com/news94907470.html

seemed obvious, the downloadable pdf paper at

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0703122

is over my head, but I found the whole thing entertaining nonetheless. If this belongs in another forum, such as MTT or Science, Math, Philosophy, feel free to move.

I'll take a more rigorous shot at understanding it if there is any subsequent interest.

best,

zooey



Abstract:

Universal statistical properties of poker tournaments

Clément Sire

(Submitted on 12 Mar 2007)

We present a simple model of Texas hold'em poker tournaments which contains the two main aspects of the game: i. the minimal bet is the blind, which grows exponentially with time; ii. players have a finite probability to go ``all-in'', hence betting all their chips. The distribution of the number of chips of players not yet eliminated (measured in units of its average) is found to be independent of time during most of the tournament, and reproduces accurately Internet poker tournaments data. This model makes the connection between poker tournaments and the persistence problem widely studied in physics, as well as some recent physical models of biological evolution or competing agents, and extreme value statistics which arises in many physical contexts.

Re: Physicist Examines Tournament Statistics in Phys. Let.
 

As a physics grad student, this is near and dear to my heart.

Re: Physicist Examines Tournament Statistics in Phys. Let.
 

Thanks for posting. I don't have time to go through the paper right now, but I've downloaded it and hope to read it in the near future. It looks likes the mathematical level is beyond the Chen/Ankenmann book, so if you found The Mathematics of Poker tough, you probably won't like this article. I have no idea at this point if the guy is using realistic poker scenarios or assumptions and whether or not there is anything of value (beyond academic interest) to a typical poker player in this work.

Re: Physicist Examines Tournament Statistics in Phys. Let.
 

You'll find a non technical description of the results of the paper at

http://www.lpt.ups-tlse.fr/article.php3?id_article=237

This work describes the global dynamics of a tournament, and does not try to address individual behavior/best strategy. The main results concern the distribution of the stacks at a given time in the tournament, and the properties of the chip leader (total number of chip leaders in a tournament, distribution of their stack).

Re: Physicist Examines Tournament Statistics in Phys. Let.
 

You know, seriously, I think I feel like this is going to be the book I write.

"The Physics of Poker"

Meh, maybe not. It naturally sounds waaaay to derivative. I need a better name, but this at least gives me hope.