OT: Analysis of my recent results (long)

[suzzer99]

I think at least 15% is doable at the $60s, unless you only play primetime weeknights or something. I can't tell my exact results right because the 18x$60s fry out tourney manager. But I just sent a request to PS for some summaries. I think I'm running like 12% over my last 4-5k $60s. And if I can do that, I would assume 15% is certainly attainable.

Just so no one thinks I'm bragging. I'm struggling mightily to pull above 0% over my first 1k $114s. And I'm like 0 for my last 20 $225s. Although I think it's a pretty interesting sign of the times if 12% at the $60s is now a brag.

[blackize]

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AKA none of us have enough of a sample and we are going to go on gross runs and monkey tilt?

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Nah I just think that people underestimate how different your ROI could be from your true ROI even over thousands of games. I think they also underestimate just how bad the downswings can get.

[Bastian]

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It turns out that if 34 of these key showdowns had gone my way instead of Villain's way, the percentages would be swapped. I was ITM 472 times. So, if I could have reached in and changed just 7% of these key showdowns, I would be running just fine and dandy.

okay, thats nice, and if i won 60% of my coinflips with the PP then i would make more money than winning 55% of the time, but mathematically that doesnt work out. so what is the point of this statement

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He's not talking about coinflips. What are you talking about?

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it doesnt matter if hes talking about coinflips
the point is IF you won more showdowns than you actually did youd have more money - not a very hard good point

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Okay? and thats exactly what he was saying too. lol

[Brown_I_Filla]

I'm a terrible sng player. Just an awful poker player in general. But I do enjoy watching good players play sngs. I'm trying to learn the game, so if I find somebody good I stalk them for awhile.


I must say I'm nervous about becoming a good sng player. They seem to have the WORST luck. It's almost like the poker site is egging them on to go switch to cash.


What I've noticed is when it REALLY MATTERS ( the bubble, or 1 away) the good player cannot win a "toss up" to save their lives. And the 3 outer too. You guys must go crazy if you do this for a living.

Lots of respect, but I for one don't trust this whole online thing.

[ManChild]

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okay, thats nice, and if i won 60% of my coinflips with the PP then i would make more money than winning 55% of the time, but mathematically that doesnt work out. so what is the point of this statement

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How long do you think it is possible to win coinflips at a rate of 48%? It's entirely likely that if you play enough poker this winrate of coinflips will continue for hundreds or thousands of hands. Since most of the times we are in coinflips are times when it has opportunity to drastically affect our finish distribution one way or the other this is a rather large deal and as Pineapple has shown could drastically reduce one's ROI.

This all goes back to what I had to say about sample size. With so much of your ROI riding on so few hands an extended downswing can really change your finish distribution and make your TRUE ROI impossible to determine.

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so he is making the point that seemingly a few wins/losses can have a big impact on your gains?
--- THUS the reason samplesize is so important

[ManChild]

whos gag account?

[ManChild]

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It turns out that if 34 of these key showdowns had gone my way instead of Villain's way, the percentages would be swapped. I was ITM 472 times. So, if I could have reached in and changed just 7% of these key showdowns, I would be running just fine and dandy.

okay, thats nice, and if i won 60% of my coinflips with the PP then i would make more money than winning 55% of the time, but mathematically that doesnt work out. so what is the point of this statement

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He's not talking about coinflips. What are you talking about?

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it doesnt matter if hes talking about coinflips
the point is IF you won more showdowns than you actually did youd have more money - not a very hard good point

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Okay? and thats exactly what he was saying too. lol

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alright well i guess i expected this to mean something deeper since that is such a clear statement and i didnt think it needed to be posted

[The Yugoslavian]

Btw, all the good stt player used to have the best luck...now they have the worst luck....

This happens like every quarter. It's just that most do something else or quit or something or don't whine as much as pineapple, [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]. Btw, I'm pretty sure there will be no whining this weekend and pineapple will be cool as usual. Jacknight..well....I'm not sure cool would be the right word, [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Yugoslav

[Pudge714]

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The first interesting feature of this graph is that, until we get ITM, it is not very far out of line from what we've come to expect from a winning player. The bubble percentage/ITM is a little low, but nothing too horrible.

Then, once you look at ITM, it's clear that the 3rd vs. 1st is out of whack. Typically, the two percentages would be close to reversed. So, if a player I respected showed me this graph, I would say "Dude, you're doing fine, just having some bad luck once you are ITM, stay the course."

It's interesting to look at what the results would be if we swapped the percentages for 1st and 3rd. In that case, I would have a profit of $5175, for an ROI of 7%. Not outstanding, but solid, given that I was running a little cold on the bubble.

Now, what would have had to happen for this swapping of percentages to occur? As an approximation, let's say that there were some key showdowns that led to me getting 3rd instead of 1st. This is not really accurate, of course, but it is a reasonably proxy I think, given that the actual key showdowns may have given me 4th or 5th instead of 1st, i.e., no money at all.

It turns out that if 34 of these key showdowns had gone my way instead of Villain's way, the percentages would be swapped. I was ITM 472 times. So, if I could have reached in and changed just 7% of these key showdowns, I would be running just fine and dandy.
In other words, it doesn't take much to turn a crappy run into a decent one, and vice versa.

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Pineapple this is the major flaw I have seen during this downswing of yours. Based on the information here you can conclude two of the following things.
1. You are running really bad.
2. You are making mistakes ITM that cost you money or you are making mistakes before getting ITM that give you short stacks in the money.

You assume it is 1. When in reality it is most likely a combination of 1 and 2.


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The overwhelming question that this graph should raise in your mind is: WTF IS WITH THE VOLATILITY?!?!?!?

I mean, I've seen some volatile results graphs, but this one is just ridiculous.

A key concept to realize here is the following: assuming independence of tournaments, Finish Distribution Encapsulates Results.

What I mean by this is that the details of my actual playing style are completely irrelevant to the volatility of this graph, which is solely determined by the Finish Distribution above, plus random variance.

I'm not interested in proving this result again, there was a huge thread where it took me a week to convince Slim (a Ph. D. candidate in Nuclear Physics) of the truth of this concept, somebody can dig it up again if necessary.

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I think playing style has some effect on variance, but I don't want to get into this.

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But wait a minute, you might say, what about the assumption above about independence of tournaments? Surely I must have been on Monkey Tilt during my downswings, right?

No. There are several pieces of evidence I can cite here:
1.) I wasn't. You simply have to believe me on this one.
2.) If I was on Monkey Tilt during my downswings, that means that outside of my downswings, I pretty much must be the best poker player in the history of the universe, by a very large margin, if I am going to manage to break even, and this is just absurd.

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Tilt isn't some all encompassing thing. It's not like your downswings are purely tilt oriented, but it is possible to tilt and have if slighlty effect your ROI because you are making too few calls, or too few pushes, or too many pushes or whatever. Tilt isn't some switch were untilted= A game tilted= F game.
As well if you are going to argue you were just running really bad isn't it possible your downswings were tilt induced and your upswings were a byproduct of you running super well.

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3.) JacKnight21 has sweated some of my sets over the past couple of weeks, and he sees the unbelievably horrible runs I get on, where I get rivered 7 or 8 times a set by 2- or 3- outers, and sure this happens to everyone 1 or 2 times a set, but not 7 or 8 times, and not 5 or 6 or 20 sets in a row.


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I don't know anything about JacKnight but he isn't some ultimate SNG authority believe it or not, but it is possible both of you are wrong about certain hands.

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4.) This crap happens to me so often that if I had been tempted to go on Monkey Tilt during a downswing, I would have long ago learned how to deal with it.

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The fact that you have this attitude makes me believe you are on tilt. Based on this post you seem to think that you run worse than anyone. Anyone who has any basic understanding of statistics would realize that people don't run worse than everyone especially over a fairly significant sample.


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So, WTF?!?!? Really, I have no idea. Extreme volatility just seems to be my own personal curse, and IMHO, there is no reason for it, and it should end Real Soon Now. But when you are in the middle of it, and it lasts for months, well, it sure does suck balls.

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Same as above. You either have a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics, you are in a denial, or you do run worse than everyone else.

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Now, on to some other issues that I have seen raised at various times, or that JacKnight21 raised today:

1.) My play is too aggressive.
First, as I noted above, my playing style should have no effect on my volatility.

Second, the regulars here should realize that I play very, very close attention during my tournaments and take detailed notes on every player, which means I know how good you are, and I know what your leaks are if any. If you are good, you are going to be calling tight in many situations, so I am going to push on you, and you are going to be pushing wide in many situations, so I am going to look you up frequently, and if I see a spot where I can exploit one of your leaks, you can be damn sure I'm going to put pressure on you.

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You have complained about getting spite called.
This is what you just outlined.
1. You push a lot because regulars call tight
2. You call wide against regulars because they push loose
You aren't the only person who has come to this conclusion it is possible that these "spite calls" are in reality good calls against your pushing range.

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As I said, if any of you were sweating me over the last few months as I played, you would have seen the huge number of absoultely stupid, horrendous beats I take, and all this talk of analyzing my play for leaks would become laughable. I get my money in as a clear favorite nearly all of the time, and I lose more showdowns than I should. End of story.

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Once again you don't run worse than everyone else. It is possible that you do have serious leaks.

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4.) Are the 60s beatable currently?
IMHO, the 60s are currently beatable for approximately 10% ROI by a top-notch player. I have stated this before in other posts. But there are not very many top-notch players at the 60s from what I have seen. AtlBrvs4Life (who isn't around much) and maybe a few others. Most of the regulars have quite significant gaps in their game IMHO that will prevent them from making any kind of decent money at the 60s long-term. You might think it is unspeakably arrogant of me to make this judgement, and you are right, but I'm making it anyway.

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I disagree with this and I have some okay empirical evidence which would suggest otherwise.

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5.) Will the 60s be beatable by a less than top-notch player in the future?
Who knows? I'm waiting until after Jan. 1 personally, to see what develops.

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They will

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7.) It's stupid to play STTs.
Agreed. Cash ring games are the place to be. I'll get there eventually. I have my reasons for playing STTs at the moment. Mostly bankroll-related. But unless you are one of the few top-notch STTFers AND are having bankroll troubles, really I see no reason to continue to play STTs. You might think this statement is self-serving, but it is my honest opinion. Really, I can't wait until I leave these damn things behind.

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Good luck with ring games.

[Bastian]

I just wanted to say after having a really rough past 800 games or so, and first seeing TFG post, and then in the same day seeing pineapples, sng's are really [censored]' depressing.

Im glad that you're going to stick around pineapple (i think), even though I don't know you very well.

I've been working on this stupid game for so long and really dont wanna go back to work. Its just so sad how so many sick beats we're all taking latley.

B33nz was explaining to me how sng's now have higher variance, and that I (we) just have to deal with it.

I think the most important thing for us to do is study, play less tables once in a while, and really not slack off (i definatly know how easy that is) at this point. When bankroll permits, we can try other things.

I was planning on playing 500 games this week and next week so I could take some time off for holidays, but thats not going to work out.

BTW: I hope you're right Yugo.