stupid statistical rant inspired by donks comment while playing live

[jstill]

First off this guy was like the first person Id seen at the local card room I thought might not be horrible (pretty much everytime I think that they go ahead and prove me wrong lol)...

Real dorky looking young kid like 21 probably, thick glasses, pocket protector, calculator wrist watch, pants hiked up over his belly button and sporting suspenders (no offense to all you nerds out there, Im kind of a dork myself).

I thought a couple hands I saw him counting out the chips in the pot, or doing odds in his head. One hand he counted on his fingers so I assumed he wasnt a total donk and might actually be thinking about outs and pot odds and maybe was a 2p2er. I was a bit skeptical just becuz pretty much every pot gives u way more than the needed expressed odds for any draw even gutters at these loose full ring limit tables.

After about 45 minutes, so what like 15-20 hands? he turns to me and says "Man this is bad I havent gotten any good hands" meanwhile hes won 2 pots already and I havent won one yet and Ive been there an hour longer. At this point I know hes a donk cuz only donks ever say that [censored]. It's pretty easy obviously to go well over an hour and not get a hand u should play in full ring limit.

Then he says " 1 in 13" very declaratively ( if thats a word?) obviously trying to flaunt one of the statistics he thinks he knows (which isnt even a very useful one lol). I react by almost laughing which was bad, I dont usually tap on the glass if u will. So since I had just scoffed I felt compelled to say anything else so I was just like "uhhh ur kinda wrong and cant really complain about that anyways"

He gets defensive immediately so Im reacting like " oh damn wish I didnt do that" and then tries to justify it by saying what he was obviously doing wrong. Thinking 4 cards in the deck out of a full deck rather than minusing one from both the numerator and denominator.

I want to respond back how statistically the odds work u get a card so theres 3 in the deck to make ur pair with and 51 left in the deck so its 1/17 or u could think about the odds of a pair as 6 combos each pair so 78 out of the total number of combination of hands 1326, but even after 17 hands u cant complain about not getting a PP its pretty ludicrious because of statistical variance. That'd be like complaining about not getting ur flush every other time u flop it or not hitting a set 1 in every 8. Then I wanted to say how people only ever acknowledge when variance works against them and the samples where they ran worse than expectation in some facet and not all the times they flop more sets or get more PPs in some short insignificant sample, but really I didnt want to say any of this because I kinda go to the card room a lot and its always the same faces.

At this point I'm kind of flustered realizing the whole table is now looking at me waiting to hear what I say since obviously none of them probably have any idea about this kinda stuff (statistics in poker, variance odds ect). I just responded with "uhh... I dont really want to talk about this at the table" which I realized was probably even more incriminating than just saying 1 in 17 and certainly came across ass a very shady if not rude response?

I think my point in all this, if there needs to be one, is just that just about everyone out there is a total donk.

I know more articulate people than myself have done their versions of the evolution of a poker player or a poker players career but I think there are 3 broad stages.

The first, you dont really know what ur doing obviously and u fumble around with the game for awhile struggling with the luck in learning and the results oriented thinking that makes this game of poker such a difficult enigma/ puzzle for so many ( and still always will later on). This stage can take many forms, playing too loose generally to begin with then perhaps too tight if that is ur natural reaction of how to deal with the game (personality or risk aversion/ utility dependent I suppose?). Donkeys come in all shapes and sizes obviously. U do pick up skills here however. U might not suck and be a natural at the game so to speak. U can even get adept at reading people/ hands, analyzing board texture and knowing when to bluff and figure out things like c betting and grasp some idea of appropriate preflop play and perhaps pick up some rough idea about the odds or can identify betting patterns. A novice can still be a winning player obviously even if they dont grasp nearly as many concepts as u should to play this game, likely because everyone they play plays even worse. U think u know everything and play as well as u can and have no way to identify what ur doing incorrectly (going back to that struggle with results oriented thinking and the luck in learning, knowing what are slightly small -EV leaks is very tough to do on ur own since ur sample size is extremely small esp if u only play live or with friends even if u do so regularly. 95% of players dont get past this point (atleast). Everyone thinks they know how to play and play well so they never get any better. I really will never understand why so many inexperienced people think they play well and complain about bad results when really theyve never even tried to figure out a way to improve their play (the thing they can control that will positively effect their outcomes in the long run). Seriously people who have played less hands than some of us do in a month/ week or even day lol think they know everything.

2) U learn the math for real. U learn what odds u need for what outs and probably read a book or two and get a preflop hand chart. Legitimately I think anyone who is ok at poker now could read PNL NL theory and practice or SSHE and go to any casino and be the probably 2nd if not best player at any small stakes live game just becuz everyone else plays so wrong (and those books are great obviously). U calculate equity and learn how to count partial outs ect. U think u know everything and theres nothing left to learn. U just play and think its optimal and become complacent and no longer look for leaks. U probably start playing online at this point (if not in stage one) and begin to multitable. U learn how to talk about poker. Harrington had a great almost color commentary quip in his first volume with the story of the guy "telling a poker hand". Thats roughly what I mean when I say u learn to talk about poker, u learn what is important and the details in a hand that dictate decision making.

3) U get in touch with someone who will give u all the secrets and start really learning the game. For most of us that resource has been 2p2. U start thinking about combinations and Bayes Theorem and fold equity, U calculate equity vs a range of ur opponents hands. At this point u learn how much u have left to learn. U start thinking about hands in terms of lines and are constantly counting pot and stack sizes and planning out hands streets ahead. U want to know everything and every minute situations answer and what factors would change the decision, if u vary board texture/opponents/holdings/ action ect how that effects things. This quest never ends. U always hear that poker takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master and people say they could play their whole life and still always be constantly struggling to get better. I believe it was Ferguson who said if u arent always trying to get better and constantly improve its not worth playing and Negrenau Doyle and others have said similar things several times about how they are always trying to get better. U can easily play ur whole life and theres enough behind poker, its complicated enough and has a large enough domain of possibles scenarios where u ll never know it all. Even the best thinkers in the game/ on this forum consistently disagree over which play is the best in any particular hand. This is what makes the game so great, and frustrating [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] esp for someone like myself who wants easy upfront answers written in stone.

anyways I wrote this story/rant out once then accidentally deleted it, not fun. Hope someone thinks it was worthwhile I took the time to write it out again.

[Olbatar]

Very nice.

The frustration people experiences with this game comes from the fact that the loss is part of the game. Whatever your level is, you WILL lose money vs someone at some point and that someone can be ANYONE, even that kind of donk nerd.

(you should have acted impressed by his calculations ;D)

[RustyDagger]

Very nice story. It's a wonderful thing how easy it is to think you know the game. This guy probably had heard that "you're supposed to do some calculations" while playing.

Just about a year ago I thought I'm the greatest player ever - now I feel like I don't know anything. I guess that means I'm learning. It's a mesmerising feeling when the whole new world opens up from behind the simple game one has began with. Certainly not worth opening those doors to the people you play with....
Phase 3 playing is hard work. It's easier to just look smart and behave as if you were a great player. Quite often possibly believing it too.

[jstill]

welcome to the forum guys, thanks for the response... I assume most people saw the thread and thought too long didnt read... Im pretty much the King of creating threads like that lol

Olbatar I definitely wish I had said almost anything else than how I actually reacted for sure... o well tho

and Rustydagger thats definitely a sign ur coming out of the dark now that u dont think u know everything and acknowledge how much more u could learn... thats the hardest step I think for most people, or even if they know it they dont know where to go to learn more or feel like putting in the effort becuz theyre way/ strategy/method seems fine-ish.

There were a couple other things I meant to include in this first post, but it got kinda long obviously (altho I can type like a madman) and I forgot the second time around. If i think of anything really pertinent to peoples learning or points I might add them later.

The one thing I was just going to say though is that theres an odd transition that occurs as u go from donkey to shark that ties into this story.

When I first started out I wanted everyone to know how good I was, flaunting any statistics or knowledge I had of the game (even though most really werent even important to play, like knowing the odds of getting dealt AA or a PP). And if i lost or someone played bad I made it known I played the hand better and they made a bad play and just got unlucky (even though most of the time it wasnt true and I had nothing to complain about since they were actually making the correct play with their large pot odds or vs the range of hands I might have had rather than the hand I actually happened to have which is how I used to look at it).

At some point you improve become a solid winning and more importantly thinking player, and no longer feel compelled to berate the bad players or to draw attention to how great you are. U sit there with a quiet dignity and true confidence that you are a good player, you notice other players mistakes and could say them immediately and with confidence but dont. U lose a pot to a bad beat where the guy didnt have odds or should have folded against ur range but u just say nice hand or nothing and muck and dont even show ur top set. Now u are truly a shark with a rounders mentality when all the while prior thats what u had thought u were but really u were far from it, just a slightly more clever donkey than most others which is why u were still able to win.

Why is it you keep your mouth shut? Because the fact that literally noone at the table could tell me the odds of getting a PP, while pathetic, is standard. People dont bother to even learn the little things that could improve their game over night, odds preflop ect so theyre never gonna get to that 3rd level beyond that.

When people find out I make my spending money and bill money in college from online poker they always say... "Are u good at math then?" (which is actually the least stupid response I ever get... normally its but how much are u down... or do u actually make money and its like "uhhh ive paid all my bills and go out all the time u see me, how do u think I pay for it if I'm not actually up money and this is my only job?". The truth is though (and I know others have said this) thta its not the Math people struggle with its two other things 1) they never find out what theyre mistakes are or even what math is involved in the game and 2) the logic of how to apply the math is really what people struggle with. I am good at math, I have a minor in mathematics and have taken all the advanced real statistics, linear algebra and calculus courses available but thats not what I use in poker. The math I use in poker rarely goes beyond what I was capable of doing in like 2nd grade arithmatic, its learning what the math is thats involved and then spending a lifteime learning how to apply it appropriately (this is the mastery of poker). I really strongly recommend mathematics of poker to anyone who has played poker for a bit, knows the odds and wants to get to the next level.

Sadly many solid "feel players" pros even, dont know the math. If u told them theyre pot odds, they would probably make the same assumptions as u about ur opponents range yet couldnt calculate the ev (and dont ever bothering to do so). They just make their assumptions about players then do what they think is intuitively correct based on their basic understanding of pot odds.

These players are often very tough winning playres. Many feel players succeed because they are very adept (much better than the norm) about making the assumptions needed to apply the math ie what hands a villain is capable of having in wihch spots, then just intuitively chose their action occasionally defying true math for based on what their assumptions are (good math playres do this as well occassionally obviously with glass decisions since they dont always do out the ev calc expressly while playing esp multitabling). But they can check it later and see if theyre play was truly correct based on what they thought their opponents ranges were which can be invaluable. Obviously the feel players dont defy the math that much more often based on their assumptions though or else they wouldnt win (assuming their assumptions are often close to true or else again they wouldnt win). But if they could do the little math behind it in addition to being great at reading hands/ player tendencies it would only improve their game, it certainly wouldnt hinder it at all. ZJ had a good thread once about the gap in many feel players subconscious and conscious learning and the luck in learning a while back and why they can still succeed.

I used to think of myself as a feel player or reads players. I didnt like online because I couldnt see the players (and I thought u couldnt win if people didnt fold lol I was such a donk). I had read a few books supersystem helmuths theory of poker even actually and Caros book. I heard someone rip on Caros tells book before but it really is invaluable theres no reason not to read it if u ever play live. Because I thought I was great I didnt improve as quickly as I could have perhaps. I had alot of success playing around campus and won far more than my fair shrae of small buy in multi table tournaments and in home games aroudn campus. I thought I was a rounder because it paid for all my beer money but really I was missing so much... I still am I'm sure [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] switching over to NL I feel like I'm pretty much starting over again (not really but its a new puzzle to tinker with) which is always exciting/ motivating.

[Yoshi]

WOW! LONG POSTS! good one though. I like where you mention about the transition from fish to shark.

The players that berate other players for bad plays and blab and blab about statistics are most often the losing players.

Why would someone that truly understands the game berate someone for calling with absolutley horrible odds? Thats what you want people to do! However, if you understand the game then you understand that even if you are a 98% favorite you are still going to lose 2% of the time. If its that time, then its that time. You are going to be a very profitable player against someone drawing to a 1 outer.

As far as statistics go, why even bother talking them at the table. There are so many people that believe poker is just luck and gambling, why would you want to lead them to believe that there is actual winning strategy to the game.

Good players understand this and just keep quiet while all the bad players are saying how good they are and berating other players for there bad play.

[jstill]

[ QUOTE ]



Why would someone that truly understands the game berate someone for calling with absolutley horrible odds? Thats what you want people to do!

[/ QUOTE ]

exactly. If you aren't seeing players make objectively -EV plays u arent in a good game, thats what you should hope to surround yourself with and thus prepare for the inevitable variance. If people aren't doing these things thats when you should complain because poker has no sustainability when everyone plays as well as you since its a negative sum game (due to rake tips ect).

Beyond even that, the other reason you can't complain about bad beats (which is a point noone ever acknowledges) is that they serve as the function in statistics that allows for the regression to the mean. Think about it, everytime u win a pot where you were a x% to win u dont win x u win the whole pot. So bad beats have to come along to make up for all those times you run better than your expected value but you just think of that as the norm because " you deserved to win the pot", which is true but really ur skylansky bucks are all ur entitled to, not the whole pot.

Variance is a crazy thing, even in the very long run players of the same skill level can have very different results, its just a fact of standard deviation and the bell curve in statistics. But eventually the law of large numbers takes over, and in the end your results are the summation of your decisions over your poker playing career of millions and millions of hands.

I like how Ed Miller stated it, though I might mess this up, if you follow bank roll management and keep trying to get better in the long run no bad beat, short of being struck by lightning, can hold you back from success in poker. Even if you haven't had the kind of success you may have hoped for or expected in the short term as long as youre a better poker player at the end of that period of time, you've succeeded and you'll be better for the upcoming year and hopefully reap the benefits of your skylansky bucks in the end.

[agt]

good stuff

[magneticskull]

I remember with great clarity when I heard about that court decision in Virginia, where the Judge ruled that Poker was a game of chance, not skill.

For the first two days, I was upset, insulted etc... My ego was getting in the way.

But then I realized, that's what I WANT people to think. I want Joe Donkey and his pally Billy the Fish to come into the Casino thinking they could get LUCKY. Like Lotto. I don't want anyone to think I'm GOOD at poker. I'm just waiting to get lucky like the rest of you shmoes. Yeaah. That's it. Lucky... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Now if only I could actually apply it. It's funny, when the cards are cold, it's sometimes comforting to talk about the game, let people know that you know what you're doing. But it's an ego trap.
The days when I'm on my A-game, I'm chatty, but it's just chatter, not stats or "here's how much I know about poker".

So I'm gonna make a note. I learned something from this today, that maybe I already knew, but essentially, it's this...

Leak # 452.1 - I will not chat about the game mechanics or odds just to show I'm knowledgable as a consolation for cold cards.

Thanks to the OP for this. Useful stuff, worth the long read.

[JOHNY CA$H]

If you ever find yourself in this type of situation again, simply reply: "Oh well, it's 50/50 anyway".

Works every time.