Winrates of different players at differnt tables

[Hielko]

This post is a bit hypothetical, but you will see things like these happening in real life so I thought it would be fun to think about this a little bit.

A few situations:

1. You are a 1BB/hour winner in a game that is now playing 8-handed. Your mirror image walks in - he is equally skilled - and sits down making the game 9-handed. How will this affect your winrate and to what degree?

2. You are a donk losing 5BB/hour. The game consists of 8 average players (+0,5BB/hour) and two -5BB/hour donks. The other donk goes broke and leaves the table. How will this affect the winrate of the remaining donk?

3. You are playing at a loose passive/aggressive table with one player that will always raise on the button, but is very bad in general (calling down any pair and any draw). Do you want to have position on this player or not? If you have position he will almost always raise you're blinds.

[emerson]

[ QUOTE ]
This post is a bit hypothetical, but you will see things like these happening in real life so I thought it would be fun to think about this a little bit.

A few situations:

1. You are a 1BB/hour winner in a game that is now playing 8-handed. Your mirror image walks in - he is equally skilled - and sits down making the game 9-handed. How will this affect your winrate and to what degree?

2. You are a donk losing 5BB/hour. The game consists of 8 average players (+0,5BB/hour) and two -5BB/hour donks. The other donk goes broke and leaves the table. How will this affect the winrate of the remaining donk?

3. You are playing at a loose passive/aggressive table with one player that will always raise on the button, but is very bad in general (calling down any pair and any draw). Do you want to have position on this player or not? If you have position he will almost always raise you're blinds.

[/ QUOTE ]

The first question looks like the only one I can tackle, but it looks like insufficient information. We don't know who you are sharing the spillage from the weak players with now and what your share of it is.

Suppose there is only one other winning player at the table, before your twin arrives, and that other player is exactly equal to you. In that case the two of you are sharing 50:50. Adding your twin to the table will give you each 33.33% of the losses from weak players. So instead of getting half of 2 BB/hr, you will be getting a third. Your earnings should drop from 1 BB/hr to about .667 BB/hr.

However, suppose at your current table there are three other players equal to you who are sharing the losses of the weak players. When this is the case you are taking a pie that is being split 4 ways and are now going to split it 5 ways.

It is like a bunch of people getting together to rob a bank. If 6 guys are doing it, how much will it cost you to add a 7th guy, etc. It is basically another person to share with.

The more winning players there are at the table now the less it will cost you to have an additional winning player take the empty seat.

If you are the only winning player at the table when your twin arrives then it cuts your win rate in half.

Of course there is a small flaw in this equation that I'm uncertain how to adjust for. You are splitting the pot with more people when we add winning players, but we now extract a bit more from the weak players because we have an extra hand for them to compete with. So the pie is split more ways but the pie also gets a little bigger.

[Hielko]

I have - ofcourse - also thought about these things and I don't think that your winrate will suffer as much as you are suggesting. In most cases you don't need to share: the losing players are just going to lose faster. Usually just one of you will be involved in a pot. Things only get complicated when both of you are involved.

[emerson]

[ QUOTE ]
I have - ofcourse - also thought about these things and I don't think that your winrate will suffer as much as you are suggesting. In most cases you don't need to share: the losing players are just going to lose faster. Usually just one of you will be involved in a pot. Things only get complicated when both of you are involved.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, what I wrote above is what I do. My wife and I go into a place that has a 10/20 game and a 20/40 game, both pretty good. She and I play much the same. I think we can make more (combined) by playing different tables, even though one table is half the stakes. If I can be convinced otherwise then perhaps we will both play the same table when this arises in the future, as it does often.

[jogger08152]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I have - ofcourse - also thought about these things and I don't think that your winrate will suffer as much as you are suggesting. In most cases you don't need to share: the losing players are just going to lose faster. Usually just one of you will be involved in a pot. Things only get complicated when both of you are involved.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, what I wrote above is what I do. My wife and I go into a place that has a 10/20 game and a 20/40 game, both pretty good. She and I play much the same. I think we can make more (combined) by playing different tables, even though one table is half the stakes. If I can be convinced otherwise then perhaps we will both play the same table when this arises in the future, as it does often.

[/ QUOTE ]
Hi Emerson,

Hielko is correct.

A losing player's losses come from two sources: the rake (or time charge, but in games this size I assume a rake is more typical, and in any case it punishes poor players much more harshly than a time charge) and more skilled opponents.

(As a matter of interest, the rake beats poor players specifically because they often pass pots back and forth with other bad players when neither player's hand offers an appreciable edge. As a result, the frictional cost of the rake, applied over many pots, results in the bad players collectively finishing with less money than they started with. The same thing often happens to investors when unethical brokers "churn" their money through frequent stock transactions. (In fact, a good rule to live by is: when considering transactions that involve frictional costs, less is more.))

The bad player loses against the good player (at least at 15/30 and smaller, which is the limit of my experience) typically because the bad player plays too many hands and goes to far with them. If each good player plays about 15% of his/her hands, especially if the good player takes position into account, the poor player will simply end up playing a lot of heads-up and three-handed pots against much better hands held by much better players. Your mirror hurts the bad player in exactly the same way you do. Your iimage will not throw his money into the pot with weak starting holdings - which means the bad player will have less overlay in those instances where he sucks out (or where he starts with a real hand). Your mirror image will also pay off bets and less often when he is beat than would a weaker player.

The upshot of these factors is that the bad player will lose even more money than before, assuming the appearance of yet another good player doesn't chase him off or scare him into playing better.

By the way, if you do sit at the same table as your wife, consider sitting on opposite ends of the table. This will ensure that the two of you are simultaneously involved in the least number of pots possible (and of course when either of you has position for a blind steal, it won't be against the other).

Best regards,
Jogger

[emerson]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I have - ofcourse - also thought about these things and I don't think that your winrate will suffer as much as you are suggesting. In most cases you don't need to share: the losing players are just going to lose faster. Usually just one of you will be involved in a pot. Things only get complicated when both of you are involved.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, what I wrote above is what I do. My wife and I go into a place that has a 10/20 game and a 20/40 game, both pretty good. She and I play much the same. I think we can make more (combined) by playing different tables, even though one table is half the stakes. If I can be convinced otherwise then perhaps we will both play the same table when this arises in the future, as it does often.

[/ QUOTE ]
Hi Emerson,

Hielko is correct.

A losing player's losses come from two sources: the rake (or time charge, but in games this size I assume a rake is more typical, and in any case it punishes poor players much more harshly than a time charge) and more skilled opponents.

(As a matter of interest, the rake beats poor players specifically because they often pass pots back and forth with other bad players when neither player's hand offers an appreciable edge. As a result, the frictional cost of the rake, applied over many pots, results in the bad players collectively finishing with less money than they started with. The same thing often happens to investors when unethical brokers "churn" their money through frequent stock transactions. (In fact, a good rule to live by is: when considering transactions that involve frictional costs, less is more.))

The bad player loses against the good player (at least at 15/30 and smaller, which is the limit of my experience) typically because the bad player plays too many hands and goes to far with them. If each good player plays about 15% of his/her hands, especially if the good player takes position into account, the poor player will simply end up playing a lot of heads-up and three-handed pots against much better hands held by much better players. Your mirror hurts the bad player in exactly the same way you do. Your iimage will not throw his money into the pot with weak starting holdings - which means the bad player will have less overlay in those instances where he sucks out (or where he starts with a real hand). Your mirror image will also pay off bets and less often when he is beat than would a weaker player.

The upshot of these factors is that the bad player will lose even more money than before, assuming the appearance of yet another good player doesn't chase him off or scare him into playing better.

By the way, if you do sit at the same table as your wife, consider sitting on opposite ends of the table. This will ensure that the two of you are simultaneously involved in the least number of pots possible (and of course when either of you has position for a blind steal, it won't be against the other).

Best regards,
Jogger

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you for your comments, I will give them serious consideration. There is one other small consideration when the casino is made up predominately of poor players. The good player takes up a seat that a poor player may otherwise come and occupy.

There is a particular place that has a 10/20 and 20/40 game where we will be going in about two weeks. It is generally made up of half pro or semi-pro players and half fish. Very few inbetween. Normally you have to take the seat that is available when you are called so sitting at opposite sides may not be that easy, but we could strive for it.

Thanks again for the insight.

[private joker]

Jogger -- that was an awesome post. Don't be a stranger.

[daveT]

When I used to prop, another prop told me that he always wins when we are playing together, although I played better than him.

I think that this is because of our very different styles. I am a hyper-aggro player -vs- his wait-til it's good strategy. I am also tighter PF but have a larger raising range than he does. I think that the bad players simply were more inclined to enter the pot when I was playing, because they knew the pot was going to be bigger.

So that instance was a time when his win-rate increased but mine stayed about the same.

When the table was tighter, my own wr would decrease markedly, but his wr would be about the same as his play would dictate.

I have always thought, though that any table does not have room for more than two winning players. As already pointed out, you will not be contesting the good player that often. When you add in the third player, this forces you to play sub-optimally against the fish. The edges in this game aren't large enough to accomidate many winning players. If you find yourself at a table that two players are clearly better than you, move.

#2- Your win-rate shouldn't be effected too much. If you are losing money on every hand, you are going to lose it whether another good or bad player is in the hand.

#3- This is classic. You would rather be to the right of this wierdo, as you will be able to trap the other calling stations for more chips. Even bad players will pitch the dismal holdings for two bets, you would not want to let these go. If this a "check to the raiser" kind of table, you will have plenty of free cards.

[Justin A]

#2 is an impossible situation. Two donks losing 5 bb/hr each implies the other 8 players have to split up 10 bb/hr.

[Hielko]

[ QUOTE ]
#2 is an impossible situation. Two donks losing 5 bb/hr each implies the other 8 players have to split up 10 bb/hr.

[/ QUOTE ]
I just made up some numbers, but there is ofcourse some money going from the table thanks to the rake.