In conclusion:

I think that for a tightish player like pokerboy (and similar) it's possible that he's slightly more likely to get himself in situations where he is drawing more dead than he (or pokerEV) thinks on occasion.

It's only a theory and I really don't know that much about this stuff.
But if you are taking the pokerEV graphs at face-value then I think that is a mistake.

It is possible that pokerboy is really proving that the pokerev results can be skewed even on all-in situations only DESPITE pokerev's claim to the contrary and that even those can be player dependent.

And how do we know this might be possible?
Because the results we are getting in the pokerEV graphs on how often pokerboy and others should be winning doesn't look right.
Thus the problem might not be in the cards. It might be in the way pokerEV does things.
And I've already come up with some pretty realistic examples of how the results could get skewed over time.

I'm sure there are other possibilities besides the ones I've thought of but I'm not smart enough to figure them out.

OMG we need to audit that EV calc ASAP

SCAME SACM RIGGED!

I think his intentions are good.
I think he and others are misapplying the data perhaps and after a large enough sample it will yield potentially wacky results.

Yea I think the error is likely to be small though.

I love it when people claim a site is rigged then make statements like this that demonstrate they don't have a clue. Because being a favorite in poker means different things for the sake of argument lets say we are only dealing with heads up situations where the favorite is 3 to 1 to win pre-flop. In a sequence of 500 of these situations the probability of the underdog winning 10 in a row at least once is greater than 50%.

I estimated the numbers to favour the "it's rigged" side. If I actually did the math I believe the sequence wouldn't need to be even close to 500. It doesn't matter since even if it was 1000 given the number of hands a typical online player churns though it is almost a certainty that they will lose 10 in a row as favorite at least a few times a week.

PokerEV Phil would probably be the best person to talk to for stuff like this. I'm sure he has a good idea of how to interpret the data and can shed light on any inherent margins of error there might be in the calcs. Someone from the probabbility forum could probably let us know if pokerboy's sample of 4K all ins is meaningful. I know -50BIs is meaningful to any player, but is it meaningful mathematically over this specific sample type?

As to random people mucking our outs and having that result in incorrect equity calculations, OMG LOL. Stick to the basic FPP algebra. And come sit at my tables please.

I'm literally sitting here laughing at my computer over Bob's ignorance.

You don't know how the program works, you're spelling it out wrong, and yet you're going to make yourself the centerpiece for this argument.

As I've explained before, it doesn't matter if you're getting your money in good or bad. The reason is that this program simply calculates how often you are winning or losing the equity that you have in a pot (in all-in situations) and then tells you how close you came to achieving that. If I'm getting money in bad in a lot of spots, I'm going to have a lower equity. It's how far I deviate from that equity that PokerEV tells me.

Seriously Bob, educate yourself on this stuff a little bit before making your long-winded matter-of-fact posts so that you don't end up with your foot in your mouth.

It's in the third graph I posted in BBV: the probability curve.

This is actually a very new feature in PokerEV so it hasn't been scrutinized and validated like the rest of the program has.

There were other AIE calcs out that gave similar results to PokerEV.

Having said that, there is some sort of discrepancy when it comes to multi-way pots and I'm not quite sure that a solid solution ever came about. But I do know that this would only slightly skew results.

Oh and lol at your thoughts on why the program might not be accurate:

Why would you want the program to show you folded cards? Do you just not calculate pot odds at the table because you can't see what everybody folded ? WAT? This part seems really silly to me. There are other times where you are going to have 'extra outs' too because your outs might be more 'live' because they are not in your opponent's hand. In the long run these are going to cancel each other out.

Your other 'complaints' about the program are seemingly basically along these lines where you want to see what your opponents folded.

But I definitely support looking into how PokerEV works and seeing if there is a flaw in the program. I also support looking into other regulars (mainly those that play excessive amounts of hands like MTTR and I) and seeing how our results compare when combined. And I support you looking a little bit more into how to interpret PokerEV results so that you don't say silly things like

right after you say

More likely that you and others (me included) aren't interpreting them right.

You may want to wait to bring phil into this argument, after someone posts more than only 1 HH.

Current old PEV beta, has brain farts at 100k hands or so, due to not having a back end database. His new soon to be released beta won't have these limitations. Any large sample will probably have to be run thru HM to run a lifetime EV graph, until phil finally releases his new beta. I can assure you that the EV calculations from HM are different from the EV calcs in PEV. They use 2 slightly different formulas to calculate it. Which is right, or more accurate, you would have to let roy and phil explain it, and decide.

1p0kerboy.

The folded cards problem he mentioned is a pokerev one. It supports site that will muck opponents cards when they are all-in against you and therefore completely screw your/its ev calcs.

I would say a couple of things as you are obviously not a normal rigged complainer

1) It's possible that there are an equal amount of regs that are running well in all-in ev that you don't see as they don't post graphs to show how lucky they are or they run so well they move up.

2) There could be an inherent problem with the pokerev calculator (I doubt it).

3) It could be a statistical phenonmenen and the results you see are well within what you would expect (I am not really smart enough to do this analysis).


What would be really interesting is for someone to pick a relevant sample of regulars from Full Tilt and Stars and to run this analysis.


As an aside I don't know how easy it would be for Stars to rig the software in the way that you suggest unless they had an definitive way of ranking who they wanted to rig it against. Even then it seems that they would do it in a won money vs lost money way vs a regular/non regular way.

Also, if fgators reads this he is sure to turn up for a big "I told you so".

I don't think you understand what he was saying to be honest.

I know that some sites don't offer hand histories of mucked hands and thus the results are going to be completely skewed. (It's most common to see sites do this with datamined hands only) We've seen that problem and the status quo is to just not use the program at sites that write their hand histories this way.

On PokerStars we don't have this problem. All cards that go to showdown get written in the hand histories.

What Bob was referring to was completely different. He was talking about the cards that opponents folded and essentially had zero equity in the pot. They shouldn't matter in the long run. This is what he said:

This one refers to the "bunching effect" which I believe Mason wrote an essay back in the day explaining just how miniscule it was (it may have been David).

1p0kerboy - Saying that "they shouldn't matter in the long run" doesn't make it so.
I'm sorry that you are unable to get my argument.

Sklansky (or Mason...I forget which one as well) and others will talk about this issue having a less than marginal effect I believe.
Of course I generally make the calculations in the same way that everyone else does for a specific hand. The effect is usually so small as to not really be something to consider as you pointed out.

But for purposes of the EV stuff and being in the bottom 1% and all that one has to consider the cumulative effect of such little differences in the actual EV vs. the EV that the program is estimating.

Something is causing the differences here. It seems pretty unlikely over a 750k hand sample that is supposed to be JUST on flipping EV and not affected AT ALL by one's playing style that your sample would JUST HAPPEN to put you in the bottom 1%.
Either you just happened to grab a sample that is pretty unlikely to happen, or Stars really is setting up occasional cards against their favorite regulars, or perhaps a very little and virtually meaningless difference on individual hands is having a cumulative effect over time.

When your AK is more likely to be 47% vs. 77 instead of 45% because you are in a blind vs. blind battle and you just didn't bother caring about the fact that the people before you folded their hands preflop you don't care obviously as was pointed out in the earlier writings on this. Whether it's 45% or 47% you are still going to play the hand the same way of course.

But that was just for playing that individual hand.
It's possible those little 2% differences could add up over the course of a 750k hand EV sample.

Perhaps it all evens out anyway. I'm not sure.

But if I came up with the graph that you did my first reaction would not be about how amazing it was that I just happened to grab a sample that is in the bottom 1%.
My first reaction would be, "I wonder if this graphing stuff is as accurate as everyone thought. Because the bigger my sample the more I trend down towards the very bottom and that just doesn't seem right to me."

Something like that anyway.

You're laughing at me for looking at little percentages in there which are virtually meaningless.
Well, the other part of the theory (or myturn's theory...or whoever's) has to do with the possibility of Stars adding in pretty much the SAME kind of teeny little percentages against the regulars that could hardly be noticed to help keep the fish in the game.

Again, I'm just looking for possibilities to explain some abnormal results and I believe there are other possibilities then what you have considered.

You use the phrase "3 to 1" and then go into the underdog stuff.
I hope you aren't assuming that a 3 to 1 dog can win 10 in a row over a 500 hand sample. Because I'm pretty sure that's wrong.

I'm not sure about a 50/50 coin-flip losing/winning 10 straight though.

God only knows the amount of money stars is raking,why would they want to screw that up by rigging games.I would seriously doubt pokerstars is rigged but humans are involved so you never can be sure.

I once made 3 player profiles exactly the same,typical tight aggressive solid players,call them A,B and C.I put them in a the same game with some rocks,maniacs,loose players,calling stations and simulated a million hands,with seats being randomly changed every 20,000 hands.I don't have the exact numbers in front of me but after this simulation player A was + about 700,000..player B was + about 200,000..and player C was stuck about 400,000.

Point being that player A would consider himself a champion player and player C would think he is a horrible player or swear he was being cheated.
When in reality one plays no better than the other.There is lots of a skill involved in poker but also lots of luck,and to say everyone that plays poker has the same luck in the long run is a statistical improbability.

My point to all this is that I would tend to think it is a fair game but I wouldn't be completely sure of it.Put yourself in their place,I'm sure they have no use for players who do nothing but cash out and I'm sure they would like to see the guy who sends them thousands and consistently loses book a few winning sessions and stay in the game longer..The flipside to that coin is if it ever got out that certain people were delibrately given good breaks no one would play there anymore.

They make huge money dealing a fair game and I doubt they would try to screw that up.

Well this finally cracks everything wide open, the sites are fine, but:

PokerEV is rigged!!!!




I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.
Isaac Newton

And the point I'm trying to make is that in the long run, I'm going to have that 77 against my opponent's AK just as often so it will even itself out. How are you not understanding this?

Great level!

1p0kerboy - Maybe it will even out. But you will play your 77 vs. an AK differently than you play your AK vs. a 77. And so will a fishy opponent.

And it's not JUST blind vs. blind battles. It's just one example dude.
The situations with 3 players to the flop and then 2 people get all-in were particularly striking to me.

You SAYING that it will even itself out does not make it so.
We don't know that it ends up evening out over everyone's playing styles.
You are getting abnormal results. Something is causing this.
I'm just looking at one thing. There could be others.
Dismissing it by saying, "yeah, but that part should just even itself out" is not very good methodology.

When myturn says that his all-ins win 5% less than they are supposed to (as I believe I read from a post several months ago) then I would be more concerned that I perhaps missed something in my way of putting all that stuff together.
Same for the pokerEV graphs over a large sample.

A way to look into that would be to try to set up one of those million hand simulation thingee. Set it up in different ways with loose-passive vs. loose-agg. Loose-agg vs. loose-agg...etc etc. And WITH 9 players on the table so you get more folded cards sometimes and players passive enough to fold AK or AQ after they initially enter the pot preflop. And then run these different simuls a zillion times.
And then look at the results and see if there are some scenarios that hit the bottom 5% or bottom 1% more often than other scenarios.

You're a pretty tight player and are playing full-ring tables. So the effect of folded cards before you get all-in and players folding cards before the action gets to you, etc is going to be slightly greater than for a 6-max player.
So if there's any effect at all by this stuff I believe you might be the type of player to be effected by it.

Again, I don't know.
But you really think it's completely impossible for the pokerEV calcs to be misleading you somehow?
Because I think it's pretty unrealistic for the Stars cards to be set up against you. And I also think it's pretty unrealistic that you just happened to grab a bottom 1% (or bottom 0.25% or whatever) sample.
So that ups the chances of the pokerEV thing being a tad flawed to my mind.

But I'm way not good enough at explaining this evidently and way not smart enough to really know for sure or how to run a zillion simulations to look into it further.

It also occurred to me that if you are a winning player overall and have such terrible all-in equity then you must be kicking ass to an extreme degree on the situations where you do NOT get it all-in.

Your sample is down 50 buy-ins or whatever over 750k hands. If the players are still winning overall then they are at least 51 buy-ins UP on non all-in hands.

Stars really sets it up so that the regulars only have the worst of it IF they happen to bet their chips all-in but otherwise they're fine (or are set to run way better than normal perhaps)? This seems REALLY unlikely to me.
Equally unlikely to the chance that so many players might be in the bottom 1% in all-in equity but perhaps in the top 1% when they don't get it all-in.

Something like that. I'm not really sure but something isn't right here.
And I'm less inclined to believe that it's Stars setting up the cards in precisely this way nor that it just happens to be a bottom 1% sample in all-in equity for a group of players that are still winning overall (I assume).

MicroBob

To be 100% honest with you I have run like utter crap this year. I do think the graphs tell the true story.

Is the graph 750k hands of yours or of a group sample?

You're interpreting the results wrong again I think.

I've made money in all-in pots. But I've made 51 buy-ins less than I should have over this sample.

My graph and only hands from this year.

I need to update my all-in database with this months hands. It's going to look even worse I'm afraid.

I should note that anything that shows <2.5% on the probability curve is outside of 3 standard deviations.

As a matter of fact, it would take a very special kind of player to lose money in all-in confrontations because the pot is always offering an overlay from betting on previous streets or players who folded their equity.

Mathematically poker EV is correct but there are simply too many factors that can determine winning and losing.You may flop a set and win a tiny pot then 2 hands later another guy flops the same set against someone who has top pair and someone who has a flush draw and takes down (or loses)a huge pot.Next round you flop the same set against someone who lays down an over pair and take down another tiny pot when it would have been huge had a different player held that overpair.You flop that same set again this time against a guy who is willing to go all the way with his over pair but he just lost a huge pot to a bad call so instead of having $2500 he has $700.

So this guy making a bad call on say a gut draw and getting there affected your stack by $1800 even though you never played against him in a hand.You raise to 3-4 times the size of the bb with AA and only win the blinds.3 hands later another guy makes the same raise with AA and he runs into a big stack with KK or someone makes a huge steal play with QJ,so your profit on the hand is $75 and his is $6000!! When you would both play the hand the exact same way.

A friend of mine would get completely pissed when he'd get premium hands in a lower stakes game.His reasoning was you only get AA,KK,QQ,AK so many times in life and he didn't want to waste them in a 5-10 game..Conversely if he played small and got no good hands he would be happy because he now reasoned he would get good cards in the 25-50 because the law of averages owed him.(I know,insanity)

Math can tell you how many times 77 should beat AK in 10,000 hands or how many times you should get AA in 42,000 hands but there are simply way too many things that can affect winning and losing in poker.There can be no formula for that