My estimate is that the difference between the true EV and the chip EV accounts for 1.5-2% of the overall variance in stars.com Spins.
Even if we ignore all-in equities and calculate expected winnings as ((ITM%/100%)*2.85-1)*BI*#tourneys (i.e. as if there was no lottery and the prize always equaled its average - 2.85 BI for $15s+, 2.82 for $3-7, 2.79 for $1), then the difference between them and the true EV accounts merely for 5-6% of the overall variance. (You can actually see this yourself if you run SwongSim for the fixed-prize winner-take-all 3-max structure.)
To answer the question about bad runs of a 'solid player' (I'm not sure how you define a 'solid ROI'), run SwongSim for the fixed-prize structure and divide the needed samples by 3-4 (as the difference between the true and chip EV would account for 25-35% of the variance if the prize were fixed, as far as my PT4 analysis shows).
Or just use the following formula for the one-tailed 95% confidence interval for the chip EV winrate per tourney:
true_chip_EV_wr > observed_chip_EV_wr - 600/sqrt(#games)
where sqrt is the square root.
For 90% or 80% confidence, replace 600 by 500 or 300, respectively.
The formula is based on the estimate that the standard deviation of the chip EV in a single tourney is about 350 chips. (I'm serious here.) [The standard deviation of the actual number of chips won (i.e. +1000 or -500) is about 700 chips, so its square (variance) is about 4 times bigger as said above.] I've multiplied 350 by the quantiles from the
z-test table and rounded the numbers to get 600, 500 and 300.
So, if you, say, define a solid player as someone who wins 40 or more chips per tourney, then, over 225 games (=(600/40)^2), there's a 95% chance of him winning a positive number of chips overall; over (500/25)^2=625 games, there's a 90% chance of him winning over 40-25=15 chips per tourney.
Last edited by coon74; 06-04-2015 at 04:57 PM.