Quote:
Originally Posted by jacetms
Why does 2p2 and specifically NVG love Dani? Anyone else who has his graph would get trashed. There are people on here who think Isildurrrr was just a fish on a heater, but at least there are upswings in his graph. Dani's graph on both PS and FT are highly negative with no real upswings. His defenders bring up AIEV graphs regarding his hu matches with Berri... has anyone actually seen these graphs??? Someone please explain to me why Dani is held in such high regard in these forums...
Because a lot of poker players (more so the younger ones who play predominantly on line) have a tendency to have quite a blinkered view of players who are "big name" players and make incorrect assumptions that for a big name player on a big downswing, "oh, it must have something to do with variance", or "it *is* down to variance", whereas if the big name player has a big upswing then they are "an absolute beast", or a "complete sicko", or "crushing".
The outlook above is obviously completely irrational without real evidence of the player's actual playing ability at the stakes and against the strength of opponent in which the downswing/upswing has taken place.
And in this specific downswing under discussion, one can only cite negative variance as a significant component of Dani Stern's recent downswing if we can get to see a reasonable amount of his hands to see if he has been dealt much worse hole cards than his opponent and/or has run a lot under EV in flop/post flop situations.
My *instinct* is that the sample size during the downswing is big enough to suggest that negative variance being a factor is likely to not be a big factor, but more likely to be somewhere between no factor at all and a small to medium factor. Plus, without any hand evidence we can also not completely rule out that he has been getting better hole cards than his opponent and/or running above EV with flops/post flop.
The latter is possible but very unlikely as it is very hard to run well and lose chunks over a decent sample of hands, but what is very likely IMO is that Berri Sweet has a playing edge over him and that Dani Stern has probably suffered increasing damage to his confidence during the HU battle and therefore began to play worse/go on tilt.
I have already been flamed for my views by some posters in the (now closed) other thread about his downswing and presented with all kinds of maths based evidence of deviation from the norm regarding possible parameters of negative variance over samples of ~50K hands.
These graphs are fine (and perfect) if we were applying them to a HU battle between two bots of identical ability, and reasonably logical if the player in question was one who has been a consistent winner over a big sample at similar stakes and against a similar strength of opponents but has now hit a downswing. But this is not the case with Dani Stern, so without us seeing hands dealt and hand history evidence, the more logical assumption/guess is that he has been losing due to a negative skill edge with perhaps some increases in losses also due to tilt or his confidence being dented by the downswing.
Maths, simulations, number theory etc is all well and good, but we also need to apply some common sense and real world knowledge and experience when analysing things, otherwise we will be in danger of, to use a road safety analogy, completely 100% trusting a green traffic light and mowing down a pedestrian, or completely trusting a SatNav device and steering our vehicle into the central reservation of a motorway/highway.
This kind of favouring of the big name/famous player phenomenon is not unique to poker, we often see it with sports commentators, particularly noticeable in tennis and sometimes golf, where the commentators often give zero to very little credit to the less well known player when they are beating/dominating a big name/famous player until almost at the very point where it is obvious/almost a certainty that the underdog is going to win.
The most extreme example of this I have observed is when Wayne Grady won the 1990 US Golf Open and was barely even mentioned in the final round commentary until the last couple of holes because all commentary and focus was on Greg Norman (I think he was world number 1 at the time, certainly top 4). If memory serves me right I think it may have been a 3 ball in the group and the other player was also a much bigger name than Wayne Grady so was praised and focused on by the commentators, whereas Wayne Grady may as well have been invisible for 16 holes.
Last edited by SageDonkey; 05-14-2017 at 03:47 AM.
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