Happy Boxing Day everybody. Fitting.

This is where I'm at.

OK I've done the experiment sort of.

I found a spot and stepped off 28 paces before I ran out of green. So only about 84 feet. It was uphill and broke about 2 feet r to l. I'm a 7 handicap but I consider putting a strength. After about 5 or 6 putts I had a pretty good feel for the speed and line. On putt #14 I caught the low lip and spun out and I made putt #17. Several others came fairly close just missing on the high side. I quit after making the putt.

I originally thought the putter would be -EV in this bet but I wouldn't bet against OP now. Getting to putt the same putt over and over again is a huge advantage.

People's thoughts on this?



I feel like this drawing does as good a job as I can do of visually explaining what I believe the distribution of straight makes(red area) vs breaking makes(blue area) looks like overlayed of a putters distribution of strokes.

Obviously the close you get to the very center, the more likely an outcome is to occur. And a larger % of the straight putt distribution, to me at least, will always be closer to the center than the distribution of a breaking putt.

This also does a job of illustrating combinations pretty well, the breaking putt's are likely just compressed versions of the straight putt. However when you move them farther left and right, further from the center line, those strokes happened so infrequently that it crushes your overall % of making the putt.

This is what I mean by some of your makes residing outside of your actual putt dispersion.

Nice one - not quite 100 feet, but pretty indicative nontheless.

It's a bit windy over here in the UK atm, so can't go and practice as I'd hoped on Friday. It's meant to be gusting up to 50mph+ for much of the daytime.

Wouldn’t what I I have been trying to establish create a 3rd form of proof? Is there any reason trials we are running can’t suffice? I understand that at this point the sample size is way to small to be relevant, but we sure are starting off on a heater. That is all that I have been trying to establish for about 3 days. We can prove out the expectancy of straight, then simply compare to what we actually do. Seems pretty straight forward to me.

I’m not including those at all. All I am including in my thoughts is my intuition as a guy who has played a ****load of golf, and the actual results we have seen so far.

I’m surprised there were no thoughts at all on this. I recognize I may not have explained it crystal clear while the wife was staring me down to leave, but I at least thought the idea was relatively simple.


Can you see where this breaker has about a 2’ window or so that would all contain correct lines and speeds taken individually. So hitting that window is the goal, and then simply getting lucky to have it happen with the right speed is the end result. This is why we are making so many so far. I really don’t think I can make it any more clear without having better Paint skills.

I've got more on the rest later...but the wife, ya know.

You realize that even if everyone who's posted in this thread completed the challenge the results would be almost completely worthless right?

Is that line you are calculating an arch? My line was not an arch, it resembled the sweet ass Paint drawing. Straight and then a little break at the end. I agree the putt would be longer, and noted I guess 3-4' earlier ITT.

As for the 10* on either side of my line I would never think that. In fact I have always maintained that my line was about 1' outside left and the putt could be made as high as 4' left. I'm pretty sure 3' at 100' is < 10*.

Glad we are all working a tad together...how nice!

That is certainly what I'd be saying if I were you....never mind the post 1 minute ago about us all working together.

I guess I'll have to respond to you last criticism post. Going to be tomorrow though.

This is pretty much the whole problem and why this thread made it past 50 posts in the first place. Your intuition is worthless here.

And that's not an insult to you personally - the human brain is really bad at intuition when it comes to these kind of things.

Really, really bad.

And your brain is no different from the rest of us in that regard, no matter how good you are at golf.

Attention everyone:

I have just mathematically proven that the chances of flipping a coin and having it come up heads is 50%.

Can everyone please flip a coin 10 times and tell me how often it landed on heads?

That way if it's different than 50%, I know I f'd up the math.

Thanks

Remember when people thought Doyle Brunson knew a lot about poker because he estimated he'd played 100k hands in his life?

LOL. Then 18 year old kids passed that in 3 months online.

I agree with you on this and certainly dont take it personally. Sometimes intuition just happens to be correct though! It isn't all just confirmation bias even though that sounds great. I would believe that any one of you with an aptitude for math and logic (teed that up for you NXT/ARod) would have a very strong intuition in your life's work.

Do I have the classical training in physics to illustrate my thoughts? Clearly not. But the principles I've outlined have all been true, whether I could explain them or not. Fortunately for me there have been multiple research experiments found to show my points were correct. There have been numerous things NXT has tried to say are flaws in my arguments. His views on those have all been shown to be incorrect (uphill straight putts do break against you if hit offline at all, AimPoint does have higher level strategies that are not purely planar as he said they only address, breaking putts do have multiple lines they can be holed on, etc).

So far the actual results are coming back exactly in line with what I would expect. Furthermore, there has not been a single combinations of speed and line that we have discussed in the entire distribution derail that would generate an expectancy for the straight putt that is even close to what we are seeing in real life. Small, inconclusive sample size so far, absolutely.....but I like the direction we are trending.

I'd like to see Hevad 24 table a putting green or squeeze in 5,000+ rounds of golf by 18. Keep shooting for a relevant analogy, you'll hit one eventually.

Here's one.

I could easily go out tomorrow and hit more 100 foot putts than you ever have in your life.

That's true, but at the end of the day ship would still be better at putting 100 footers than you. Just because you practice more does not necessarily make one better than one who practices less. The analogy is silly.

BO

I see you are still on the physics kick. Do you think at some point you will realize that the straight vs breaking argument likely hinges on more of a statistical basis? Or are you going to again state that this isn't a math problem?

And to just be clear, you have been right on all points in this thread and I have been wrong on every point?


By actual results coming back exactly in line with what I would expect, do you mean that the thread is currently running at 3.5% from 100 feet, when you said that this would be a -EV bet for the putter signaling they wouldn't have a make % of greater than .7%?

Just asking for clarity bc I'm not sure the thread doing 500% better than you expected falls in line with the quote "what I would expect".

QFGolfElitism

Literally, this one post may sum up BO as a poster better than anything he has ever posted.

Yet every single word was accurate, the analogy was absurd.

And as I said yesterday, the way you've acted towards others ITT gives you zero leeway to make statements like this towards others.

BO

The main point is that your "golf intuition" based on playing thousands of rounds of golf in your life is not worth nearly as much as you think it is.

But yeah I've probably hit more putts in TW07 than you have in your entire life. But IIRC that game doesn't have slopes or gravity.

You are right.

Playing thousands of rounds of golf at a level fewer than 1% of golfers reach means everything.

Some of you guys really need to get off the internet more often and actually play golf.

Move this **** to the video game forum!



BO

I'll get to the rest tomorrow, but I once again need to ask you something. Do you think we are debating if the bet is +/- ev or if OP would best be served by a breaking putt or straight putt?

I only ask because you've gone off on stray arguments repeatedly. I did say that I originally thought it was a bad bet for the putter....and for myself even. After hitting the putt I then said, and have quoted myself ad naseum, that I well underestimated the odds. I then said I didn't know what to expect of a bogey golfers odds, but that I did put them -ev if they chose a straight putt. That is when you pounced that you were the dead opposite and wanted straight all day....and thus the great debate of '13 was born.

So with regards to what I expect, I would expect the trials to be yielding results that are higher than the ballpark we are settling on as odds for a straight putt. And yes, the results are thus coming back as I expect.

I'm doing all this from memory on the ****ter but will quote it all as need be if you have a different recollection. I still don't understand why you haven't simply answered the several times what you think we are debating. I'm really not sure you know....I'm not trying to be a dick there, but this is yet another post completely irrelevant to what we are in conflict over.

How about address the lame ass Paint I made with where I think the confusion lay on the "straight all day" side. Again, I'd like to grow up and get to the answer so we can all move on. This is close to being settled and then life can resume.

Lol, I haven't played a video game in over a decade

First lets embed this image so everyone can see it in all its glory.

to do this you just put [img] in front of the url and [/img] behind the url.



First impression: looks like the shot cone is between the red and blue lines. I wonder what the other lines are for...

Oh ok, a ball hit on the black line goes in? Hasn't SHIP stated a million times how a dead straight 100 footer doesn't exist. Now he creates one? Well I can already tell this is gonna be ****ed.

Ok that sort of makes sense, the blue line would as far left as you can possibly hit it and still have it go in. Of course the funneling effect is quite peculiar, should probably just put another one of those magical slopes on the other side of the hole then we can make almost 100% of our 100 footers.

Well now I am ****in confused. The red line is as far as you can push the ball and have it go in? How the **** did the black line putt go in then?

No the first 80 feet would not want to tend to straighten unless the putt was DEAD FLAT, but of course you have already stated a million times that a putt of that description does not exist in the real world.


No your drawing and the attached description make no f'ing sense. Luckily when you first posted it people were probably too lazy to click the link to the picture AND read your description. Unfortunately, now that it is embedded that may not be the case.

Except the black line, which lies outside of the cone formed between the red and black line will also go in.

facepalm.gif

FYP

Well that was fun