Quote:
Originally Posted by Riverdale27
Thanks for the data,
Now I get your point...
You have a series of hand matchups, where you have a certain equity, a priori. Then, a posteriori, you measure equity by just using 1 for a win, 0 for a loss, and 0.5, 0.33, 0.25, 0.2, etc... for a tie (evt. when you tie between more than 2 people).
Then by subtracting the result from the equity, you get a value that states how much under or over your expectation you ran. In the long run, this should converge to 0... because you are expected to equal the equity in the long run. So A (actual) - E (expected) converges to 0 over a long run...
So we test:
H0: A-E = 0
H1: A-E ≠ 0
In your data I was quite surprised that the 95% confidence interval of the A-E was [ -0,22093831 ; -0,033441626 ]. So we can reject that A-E = 0 with a 95% confidence level. In the 99% confidence level, the interval is [ -0,25011509 ; -0,004264846 ], it doesn't include 0 as well... So either the game is unfair (with 99% confidence), or your sample is a sample that occurs very rarely... When the true population value of A-E is 0, and you get a confidence interval that does not contain 0, it seems to me you have been very unlucky by observing the sample that lies in the tail of the distribution...
I think it is pretty likely that the latter is the case here... Why? Well let's reason a bit.
If you are unlucky, then that means other players are very lucky. What could be the reason for this? The pokersite earns rake from the buy-in of such SNG's, so there is absolutely no advantage for them to let some players win, and let some others lose. The only thing that makes sence to me is that they have crazy matchups of hands, non-random matchups, that lead to a preflop all-in in cashgames, for instance AA vs KK, or maybe TT vs 99 on a T99 flop or something like that... and that they maybe (out of lazyness) use the same hand generator in SNG's (because they didn't want to correct the faulty one). With such a non-random matchup, the pot grows big and they get the maximum rake in that cashgame. But to let one player be lucky and the other one be unlucky, it doens't make sence to me. This only grows negative risk (lawsuit, ...) but does not increase positive risk (extra big profits for the pokersite)...
So for this reason I believe that you just had a really really bad run... (which I've had too some times...)
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, there are two possible conclusions, the game is unfair or the game is fair and I've had extremely bad luck, cumulatively worse than getting hit by a one outer on the river.
I don't rule out any possibility yet as I don't underestimate greed (most recently Madoff comes to mind), even of a cash cow enterprise or insiders. It just means that I need to keep digging and add to my worksheet to see if results normalize. I guess I wouldn't worry so much if it was a deviation the other way, but it's not.
If the game is not fair, what could be happening? Two possibilities come to mind.
1. The commonly put forth idea that poorer players are allowed to win to keep them playing.
2. There are insider owned accounts, playing at all levels, that are given and unfair edge for obvious reasons. It's hard to detect small frequent hits as opposed to the big greedy hits at high stakes cash.
3. Other?
I can't prove either 1 or 2, all I can do is analyze data and draw a conclusion if I'm throwing away my money or not.
What to do?
-Audit current worksheet for accuracy
-Keep adding to worksheet to see if results normalize to expected
-Write to the company and demand and explanation? would my results suddenly turn better?, the response is predictable that I'm only on a bad run and this is bound to happen due to the large number of players and hands played, etc...
- other?
I'd like to see if others out there have seen similar things and can back it up with data. To begin to assert anything, there would have to be similar results from several other players.