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BankItDrew
Old 01-14-2010, 02:38 PM     Post subject: I need help #1 (permalink)  
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 I've run into a huge problem in my life recently and I'm asking for the FTR community for some help. A writer for the Toronto Star (local newspaper) has asked me to comment on the article I'm about to post. Please do the work for me. Thanks.

You can learn a lot about gambling if you're willing to analyze 27 million hands of online poker. Don't have time for that? No worries; sociology doctoral student Kyle Siler of Cornell University has done it for you. His counterintuitive message: the more hands you win, the more money you're likely to lose — and this has implications that go well beyond a hand of cards.

Siler, whose work was published in December in the online edition of the Journal of Gambling Studies and will appear later this year in the print edition, was not interested in poker alone but in the larger idea of how humans handle risk, reward and variable payoffs. Few things offer a better way of quantifying that than gambling — and few gambling dens offer a richer pool of data than the Internet, where millions of people can play at once and transactions are easy to observe and record. (See 10 things to do in Las Vegas.)

To gather his data, Siler used a software system called PokerTracker and directed it to collect and collate information on small- medium- and large-stakes games. He limited the games to no-limit Texas Hold 'Em with six players in order to eliminate at least some extraneous variables. It was in the course of crunching all that information that he found the strangely inverse relationship between the number of hands won and the amount of money lost. He also noticed that it was novice players who lost the most.

The reason for the paradoxical results was straightforward enough: the majority of the wins the players tallied were for relatively small stakes. But the longer they played — and the more confident they got — the likelier they were to get blown out on one or a few very big hands. Win a dozen $50 pots and you're still going to wind up far behind if you lose a single $1,000 one. "People overweigh their frequent small gains vis-à-vis occasional large losses," Siler says.

Small-stakes players also tend to do better with small-denomination cards. A pair of jacks may easily beat a pair of fours, but people who don't gamble much tend to win more with the fours — or with any cards from twos to sevens. That's because the cards' modest numerical worth is easy to understand: they're valuable but not that valuable. When you get into the more rarefied air of eights to aces, you may start losing perspective and putting up more money. "Small pairs have a less ambiguous value," Siler says. (See more about casinos.)

So what does this have to do with you if you don't gamble? It's the wrong question because, actually, you do. Investing, driving, buying a house and merely crossing the street are all acts that involve discernible risks and uncertain rewards. The more small returns you get from your small investments in stocks, the likelier you are to make — and lose — a big investment. The more times you get behind the wheel and speed a little bit, the likelier you are to speed a lot — with deadlier consequences.

"These kinds of calculations are made every day," says Siler. "Adultery is another good example. People get away with it countless times but they get caught just once and they lose everything."

And unlike the risks at the poker table, where your losses are just yours, in the larger world, you can take down a lot of other people with you. "Organizational malfeasance in general depends on this kind of risk analysis," says Siler. "Look at a place like Enron. People took a lot of small chances and won, then took big chances and lost big." Indeed, Siler points out, during the recent financial crisis, an entire nation — Iceland — went bankrupt in a similar way, trusting high-risk, high-reward investments that quit paying off.

While walking away from the poker table can be easy, walking away from life — and all the risks and rewards it presents you — is not an option. But in both venues, the rule should be the same: gamble only what you can afford to lose — and know when you're approaching those stakes.

http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...rss-topstories


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givememyleg
Old 01-14-2010, 03:56 PM #2 (permalink)  
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 "more rarefied air of eights to aces"

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AdamThePirate
Old 01-14-2010, 04:00 PM #3 (permalink)  
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Quote:
He also noticed that it was novice players who lost the most.
Oh, really.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Carroters
Take it Doyle, take it!
 
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givememyleg
Old 01-14-2010, 04:00 PM #4 (permalink)  
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 commenting on this is a huge problem in your life? you must not have many issues!

for one i would try to explain that poker is skill based and not luck, even if you're using money in the form of gambling.

so he is saying gambling, or calculated risk, is a part of our every day life? like when it comes to adultery or crossing the street? kind of silly, but i think i see what he is getting at here. i just think the transition is kind of fuzzy.

also, walking away from life is an option!

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BankItDrew
Old 01-14-2010, 04:43 PM #5 (permalink)  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by givememyleg
"more rarefied air of eights to aces"
88->AA is apparently in his 'thinnest of airs' category. It's a horrible analogy for that range.


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wufwugy
Old 01-14-2010, 05:01 PM #6 (permalink)  
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 how much text for comment? what kind of comment? a rebuttal article perhaps?

whole lot of wrong in that article...
 
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Warpe
Old 01-14-2010, 05:29 PM #7 (permalink)  
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 Go to the source:

Quote:
Abstract:
Poker is a competitive, social game of skill and luck, which presents players with numerous challenging strategic and interpersonal decisions. The adaptation of poker into a game played over the internet provides the unprecedented opportunity to quantitatively analyze extremely large numbers of hands and players. This paper analyzes roughly twenty-seven million hands played online in small-stakes, medium-stakes and high-stakes games. Using PokerTracker software, statistics are generated to (a) gauge the types of strategies utilized by players (i.e. the ‘strategic demography’) at each level and (b) examine the various payoffs associated with different strategies at varying levels of play. The results show that competitive edges attenuate as one moves up levels, and tight-aggressive strategies––which tend to be the most remunerative––become more prevalent. Further, payoffs for different combinations of cards, varies between levels, showing how strategic payoffs are derived from competitive interactions. Smaller-stakes players also have more difficulty appropriately weighting incentive structures with frequent small gains and occasional large losses. Consequently, the relationship between winning a large proportion of hands and profitability is negative, and is strongest in small-stakes games. These variations reveal a meta-game of rationality and psychology which underlies the card game. Adopting risk-neutrality to maximize expected value, aggression and appropriate mental accounting, are cognitive burdens on players, and underpin the rationality work––reconfiguring of personal preferences and goals––players engage into be competitive, and maximize their winning and profit chances.
The whole paper is $34:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/...24e0e2558&pi=3



 
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Deanglow
Old 01-14-2010, 05:59 PM #8 (permalink)  
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 why don't they just ask brian hastings, a cornell student who knows a bit more about gambling than this guy
 
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Vex444
Old 01-14-2010, 06:18 PM #9 (permalink)  
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Well can always just use the quote
"Life's a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
It pertains to both
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oskar
Old 01-14-2010, 06:27 PM #10 (permalink)  
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 A player with 60% WTSD, will win more hands than someone with 20%. It also makes sense that he will loose more money. That is something to expand on.

That novice player tend to be the biggest loosers is something I would definitely pick up on, because it might be misunderstood. - In casino games with a house edge the novice players loose the least, and the regulars loose the most.

That many players tend to vastly underestimate the risk of ruin isn't new either. Someone who goes strictly by a 25BI BRM, but doesn't move down when he looses will go broke.

I think where he might have gone wrong with the 44 and JJ example is that he used datamined hands, so he's only got showdown winnings to work with. That whole thing might cause too much confusion though... I would just let it be.
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Illfavor
Old 01-14-2010, 07:30 PM #11 (permalink)  
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 Oh, so as the brinds increase there is more money at risk? Seems like he's stating the obvious with a less than clear example. I didn't see the connection between attachment to premiums and adultery, among other things.
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givememyleg
Old 01-14-2010, 07:47 PM #12 (permalink)  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BankItDrew
Quote:
Originally Posted by givememyleg
"more rarefied air of eights to aces"
88->AA is apparently in his 'thinnest of airs' category. It's a horrible analogy for that range.
lol wat

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Micro2Macro
Old 01-14-2010, 08:47 PM #13 (permalink)  
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 this article needs tits or something
"Once we reach a certain level of mastery, we see there are higher levels and challenges. If we are disciplined and patient, we proceed. At each higher level, new pleasures and insights await us--ones not even suspected when we started out. We can take this as far as we want--in any human activity there is always a higher level to which we can aspire."

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BankItDrew
Old 01-15-2010, 03:46 AM #14 (permalink)  
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Quote:
Originally Posted by givememyleg
Quote:
Originally Posted by BankItDrew
Quote:
Originally Posted by givememyleg
"more rarefied air of eights to aces"
88->AA is apparently in his 'thinnest of airs' category. It's a horrible analogy for that range.
lol wat
The air at the top of a mountain is called 'rarefied air' because of it's lack of oxygen. Author is referring to big pocket pairs as being at the top of the mountain, the strongest of hands. The problem is when he starts bringing in air to the analogy because big pairs are the opposite of 'air' in poker.


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Girlfriend: Are you on the forums doing the werewolves again?

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givememyleg
Old 01-15-2010, 05:20 AM #15 (permalink)  
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 not to mention that the analogy is ridiculous

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