math question

hi,

I read a lot about probabilites, pot odds and so on. each poker book is telling you things like:

if your chance is 1 : 10 then you should win every 10th time. Right?

Very wrong.

if your chance is 1 : 10 you should think of it that way:

if you play that odd a 100 times, then you should have about 10 winners, or if you play it 1000 times, then you certainliy will have about 100 winners.

to say: you play it 10 times, then you have 1 winner is a false assumption.

you can check it with a 10 sided dice. Throw it 10 times. it is not certain to say that you have a single "10" . Throw it 100 times, you will get about 10 "10"s.

My point here is: be careful about "false" odd calculations. its all about statistics and probability calculations.

any comments are welcome,
thanks

Brof

You are thinking short term. You gotta think about the long run. A 1:10 chance will always happen 1 in 10 times over the long run. It may not happen for 50 times or it may happen 3-4 times in 10 but over the long run it averages out to 1:10.

yes, that's what I meant with 100 times -> 10 winners. thanks.

Originally Posted by BrutalityOfFact

yes, that's what I meant with 100 times -> 10 winners. thanks.

Actually I think it's 110 times -> 10 wins.

If the odds were 1:9, then it'd be 100 times.

Originally Posted by BrutalityOfFact

yes, that's what I meant with 100 times -> 10 winners. thanks.

100 times is not long term.

Originally Posted by BrutalityOfFact

if your chance is 1 : 10 then you should win every 10th time. Right?

No it means on average you should win 1 out of every 11. (1:10 odds= probability of 1/11). So yes, the bigger your sample size the closer your results will be to the expected results. Read up on confidence intervals.

Originally Posted by BrutalityOfFact

you can check it with a 10 sided dice. Throw it 10 times. it is not certain to say that you have a single "10" . Throw it 100 times, you will get about 10 "10"s.

This really is basic statistical knowledge. So, if you didn't already know this, it's a very valuable realization. But all in all it's common knowledge. You play poker for getting good odds.. and this'll pay off in the long run. In the short run, reading people pays off more. But you play crappy odds consistently, this'll hurt your game ofcourse, a lot.

People who simply play A LOT can get good at poker too, even if they don't really know the odds.. because in the long run the odds will show themselves in your game. So through trial and error, you can develop a "sense" for the odds through intuition. Like "I dunno why exactly, but this doesn't feel like a good idea to bet here". Personally, I play only 1 week online, so I just quickly calculate how much to bet would be profitable. Even for bluffs etc. The calculations are already becoming more and more "automatic". (ie at first I needed to force myself to calculate it, now it just comes naturally when I see the cards) But one guy I know who is VERY good at poker, he never really did all the calculations like I have. He just does what he "senses" is right, which comes from experience. If you play enough and you are intelligent enough, you should get a sense of "what works" and "what doesn't" (ie the odds).

Originally Posted by jackvance

Originally Posted by BrutalityOfFact

you can check it with a 10 sided dice. Throw it 10 times. it is not certain to say that you have a single "10" . Throw it 100 times, you will get about 10 "10"s.

This really is basic statistical knowledge. So, if you didn't already know this, it's a very valuable realization. But all in all it's common knowledge. You play poker for getting good odds.. and this'll pay off in the long run. In the short run, reading people pays off more. But you play crappy odds consistently, this'll hurt your game ofcourse, a lot.

People who simply play A LOT can get good at poker too, even if they don't really know the odds.. because in the long run the odds will show themselves in your game. So through trial and error, you can develop a "sense" for the odds through intuition. Like "I dunno why exactly, but this doesn't feel like a good idea to bet here". Personally, I play only 1 week online, so I just quickly calculate how much to bet would be profitable. Even for bluffs etc. The calculations are already becoming more and more "automatic". (ie at first I needed to force myself to calculate it, now it just comes naturally when I see the cards) But one guy I know who is VERY good at poker, he never really did all the calculations like I have. He just does what he "senses" is right, which comes from experience. If you play enough and you are intelligent enough, you should get a sense of "what works" and "what doesn't" (ie the odds).

Im like that guy, I was never bad at math par say in school, I just hate it. But I love my gut and I can sense what I need to do, but I do know the odds and probabilities but I never try to calculate them during a tournament or game.

Originally Posted by jackvance

You play poker for getting good odds.. and this'll pay off in the long run. In the short run, reading people pays off more. But you play crappy odds consistently, this'll hurt your game ofcourse, a lot.

I really hate this line of thought. In the long run reading people pays off more than not reading people. In the short run it might pay off or it might not.

You can read some guy as a maniac after hes pushed the last 10 hands straight and you can call him with TT. If he turns over AA then it hasnt worked in the short run but it will work in the long run.

If u are playing for a set, you may hit 10% of the time, but someone else also might hit a bigger set or flop a str8 and still have u beat. If u have KK and hit 10% and the other guy has AA he will hit 10% also and sometimes the 10%s will overlap and u lose. So really, u win only about 9% of the time when u think it should be 10%.

Originally Posted by Pelion

I really hate this line of thought. In the long run reading people pays off more than not reading people. In the short run it might pay off or it might not.

You can read some guy as a maniac after hes pushed the last 10 hands straight and you can call him with TT. If he turns over AA then it hasnt worked in the short run but it will work in the long run.

Maybe I should clarify what I meant. Ofcourse "playing the odds" and "reading people properly" are both things that pay off in the long run. Individual sessions have variance. What I was talking about was this: if you don't really play the odds all too well, like you overvalue and as such overraise certain hands, undervalue and underplay others, etc.. you're not gonna notice that effect until you play A LOT probably. Specific reads pay off way more in this case. For example at 10NL 6max, most people are loose passives, and a decent preflop raise means they got something big! And they also tend to downplay a good postflop hand and overplay their bluffs. If you know this and play accordingly, it'll pay off more in the short run than playing the odds perfectly.

And please note that with 'short run' I don't mean "one hand", but rather playing 200 hands or something along those lines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers