You get a pocket pair about .06 of the time. The chances that someone else has a pocket pair is about .5 at a a 10-handed table. The chances that you hit a set on the flop is ~.12. The chances that someone else hits a set given that you hit a set is ~.08 (due to card removal of the first person hitting a set).

So the chances of set over/under set is ~.06*.5*.12*.08 = 0.0000288 = .0288% ~ 18/625 ~ 1/3500. Which means you should be getting set over setted 1 in 7000 times. Divide that by 30 hands per hour and that means it should happen about one every 230 hours. So in 1500 hours at 30 hands an hour at a 10 handed table assuming all pocket pairs make it to the flop, you should be on the losing end of a flopped set over set about 6.5 times, and you're saying it happened to you 40 to 50 times.

Ah, I forgot the card removal for modifying the second player's chance at flopping a set, so that's where my math is way off.

I'd have to reread exactly what Nozsr claimed, but was it *flopped* set-over-set? i.e. when you factor in turn/river set-over-set cases the number grows a bit.

GcluelessmathnoobG

yeah I added in *flopped* intentionally as to be as precise as possible, since when people say set over set it's implied that it's flopped. I don't think the turn/river changes the numbers significantly though since most of the times action on the flop will prevent another pair from continuing to the turn or river unless they have an overpair or second pair sometimes. I think it'd be more than negated by the fact that not all pocket pairs will see every single flop and that I think that the average table is dealt less than 30 hands per hour. I'd be interested to see a stat expert show how far Nozsr's claim falls outside a confidence interval/how likely his claim occurs.

Yes, 500 hours and even less should definitely give you a qualitative understanding of where your edge is coming from. But it's still very difficult to translate that into an actual WR.

Talking about set over set, lastnight I was playing 2-5 and I Saw a guy bet 50$ on turn board 8624 rainbow, another guy raise 200$ with 600$ effective, the original better snap fold face up 66 ?? and the raiser shows 22 and he is stunned... funny hand!!

Even more 2-3 hands after I stack the 22 guy that was supose to go broke with is underset.

I'm a little rusty with this stuff. Can somebody run me through the calculation for why the probability someone else has a PP is roughly .5? I can calculate the probability a specific player has a PP easily enough.

P(WeHavePP) = (13 choose 1)(4 choose 2)/(52 choose 2) = 1/17
P(WeHavePPAndSpecificOtherPlayerHasPP) = 1/17(12 choose 1)(4 choose 2)/(50 choose 2) = 72/20825 ~ .003457

That's the probability say, we get a PP and the guy to our left also get's one. But that's not very useful in computing the probabilities for the whole table. Also this is only looking at the scenario there are two pocket pairs in play. To be complete we should consider up to nine pocket pairs in play, though to be realistic cutting it off at three or four would probably suffice.

If we treat the dealing of ten players cards as ten independent Bernoulli trials with P(PP) = 1/17, then yeah okay P(someone has PP) = 1 - (16/17)^10 = .4546, which is close to .5. BUT this number is off because they aren't independent Bernoulli trials and gives misleading results because although cases in which three or more players have a pocket pair are rare, the probability of set/set is significantly more in these cases.

Also, .4546 gives the probability anyone at the table has a PP, when what we want is the probability someone else has a PP after accounting for our own PP, right? And we could estimate that in a similar fashion, but yielding P(WeAndSomeoneHavePP) = 1 - (1-72/20825)^9 ~ .0307

Anyway, if I'm following your logic, the equation should be

P(set/set) = P(underset) * P(WeAndSomeoneHavePP) * P(WeFlopSet) * P(WeAndOtherFlopSet)

Ignoring paired flops and quads/set situations

P(set/set) = .5 * .0307 * 1/8.5 * 1/8.5*2/3 = 0.0001416378

Solve(1/x = 0.0001416378,x) yields x = 7060.26 hands for set/set

Given y hands per hour, then we have 7060.26/y hours on average for set/set

Setting y=30 gives 235.34 hours, y = 40 gives 176.50 hours

I agree 40+ times over 1500 hours is probably an exaggeration but I'm not really sold on this calculation. Also, rare events like set/set have a lot of randomness in their occurrence because they are so rare. What I mean is yeah, maybe the magic answer is "set over set once per 250 hours" but results are unlikely to be close to that over even fairly large sample sizes. And we always like to ignore the possibility someone is experiencing extreme negative variance in some way.

Another thing to consider...we should be on the winning end of set/set far more than the losing end. This is because good players are capable of raise/folding hands like 22 - 77 preflop if the odds to setmine are not there, or just folding vs. short stack raises. There are many situations it's not profitable to see a flop with small pocket pairs.

So I got a little off track here, so let me repeat my original question -- where does the calculation that someone else has a pocket pair half the time come from? Because I'm having trouble reproducing that.

Empirically, yes, it's very difficult to translate 500 hours into a winrate. Empirically, all you can really conclude if winning say 8BB/hr over 500 hours is something like "I'm 95% certain my hourly EV falls within (8-x, 8+x) BB/hr where x depends on one's variance and sample size (here, probably around 5BB/hr, maybe more).

Anyway, one can do confidence interval calculations if you know or can guess you hourly EV as well as your variance. I've done them in the past and they're tedious which is why I'm just guessing 5BB/hr now, but the more hours you have the smaller x becomes. If our 95% confidence interval for 500 hours is (3BB/hr, 13BB/hr), for 2000 hours it might be (7BB/hr, 9BB/hr).

But what I think Squid is saying is if your only clue whether you're a winning player or not is your winrate, then you probably aren't one, at least not a significant one. After 500 hours of play you hopefully have studied for at least 1000 hours and can sit down at a table and figure out quickly how to exploit each player, as well as know with confidence (at the 1/2 level at least) you're the best player there and exactly why you win where the other players don't. I have some friends who are modestly winning players at 1/2 but they frequently send me HHs and can't answer questions like "Why did you do X?" or "What kind of hands can villain have here?". They know enough to know their competition sucks but when I say "well of course they suck, but how exactly?" they can't really explain it. And you should really be able to explain it. Villain plays too many hands pre flop and tends to x/f when he doesn't hit a monster. Villain is a super nit who overcommits with overpairs. Villain is a maniac who reflexively bets when checked to but may fold when raises. Villain is relatively competent TAG but c-bets too much and rarely double barrels. Etc., etc....

One's results, barring a huge sample size, are probably the last thing to look at when deciding whether you can handle a given game.

Yeah, I don't keep a hard record of every set-over-set hand that I play, but they are the type of hand that you tend to remember. Over my normal 900-1100hr year I usually can count on my fingers the set-over-set hands I've played for that year. Obviously my record keeping isn't concrete either, but I know it's a rare situation that happens only once every couple months when playing 80-90hrs per month.

KK<AA, yeah, not so uncommon. Hell I just had KK vs AA twice in a 4hr session a couple weeks ago, and ironically I was elated....Mostly due to V having a ~$50 stack both times. LOL

Yes sir three bags full, wp

This is an important point. Some players will call raises to see the flop with small/mid pocket pairs despite the opponents stack size or game conditions.

I've been on the bad end of set/set once in the past 400 or so hours, but remember two occasions where I would have been had I called the raise preflop. One was last week when I folded deuces to a short stack raise, and another was folding to a 3! preflop.

For players who will see the flop with pocket pairs no matter what it will happen more often, still I think 40-50 is excessive in that time frame.

live big blinds per hour should be lower than online big blinds per 100 hands correct?

Yea, because you'll be seeing about 30 hands per hour.

No. 5bb/100 would be crushing online. Crushing live would be 10bb/hr.

Are you asking how to convert bb/100 hands into bb/hr, or what comparable winrates would be for online vs live?

I have zero idea what comparable winrates would be, but with bb/100 you'd have to divide by about 3 to equate to live bb/hr (based on ~30ish hands per hour). Also, what's rake like for online games? I have zero experience with online, but my guess (???) would be that live rake / tips / BBJ add up to a whole lot more than online, which again means you might have to subtract quite a lot off in terms of bb/hr (especially at the lower staked games / smaller stacked games where rake has a huge effect).

GcluelessonlinenoobG

Live crusher, let's say 8bb/hr. 30 hands an hour. That means the equivalent winrate is 27bb/100 for the live crusher. Online crusher = 5-10bb/100. But they can play anywhere from 200-1500 hands an hour as opposed to just 30.

@gg, online rake is substantially lower (2-9bb/100).

so the live crusher can achieve a higher bb/100 with the reason being mainly the softer games but cant get in the high volume of hands to ease the swings that they can online

and the achievable bb/100 being 3x higher in live games must mean live games are still good

Live games have been and always will be good. The variance I feel is actually somewhat comparable imo... Live you can have losing months in the same way that you can online too, depending on your winrate and what sort of volume you put in. I feel like the variance in live can be a little more brutal though especially if you're playing less than 160 hours a month.

I think the variance depends on the stakes. At 1/2 and 1/3 the variance should be pretty mild but 2/5 the variance is way worse not just cause of the increase in stakes but also cause it plays more aggro. Ed Miller talked about 15, 20 even 30k downswings for good winning players. I'm a little skeptical of anything about 3k bbs but I'm sure Ed Miller knows what he's talking about. I've never had a downswing worse than 2k for 1/2 and 1/3 over maybe close to 1k hours lifetime. Have not played enough 2/5 to really say.

I'd say you've been lucky then, or are much better than I am, or have a much lower variance style. I'm currently in a 4k downswing at 1/2, over four sessions. Didn't seem possible to me either until it was happening. It's amazing what 50 hours can do to your results. I don't tilt anymore either as far as I can tell. Just pure run bad. I make a nutted hand, someone else has the nuts. I make the nuts, it's a chop. I try one or two big bluffs a night and they all get snapped off in ridiculous spots. Get set/set OTT after the money's gone in OTF. Calling station calls down huge raise with AX spikes his kicker OTR. Every time I make TPTK or an OP I get drawn out OTR. One session this happened literally every time. One guy hit six flushes against me, out of six times drawing to flushes. I only paid him off once OTR but still. Crazy. How many flushes have I made over this period? Zero IIRC. I did make the nut straight once but got drawn out by 2p to a boat OTR.

Live variance feels way worse to me than online because you have to sit there and watch as the dealer keeps taking your money and giving it to the luckboxes. And you wait for hours being card dead, finally make a hand like top two, and villain has flopped bottom set. When I played online I played lots of tables so like one day of online play equals a month of live play.

I would tend to believe Ed Miller here. He's talking about many pros and semi-pros playing 1000+ hours a year, some maybe 2000. Over 5 to 10 years of that I'm sure all kinds of insane downswings and upswings can happen, much less if they've been doing it 20 years.

I can't imagine even a half-decent player having a $30k downswing at $2/5....you should probably just quit if it gets that bad...and that's 6k bb, not 3k. Maybe if you are just eternally in the abyss and lose every all-in forever.

I think after the first -15k the second -15k would be mostly tilt and spew. Maybe some long time 2/5 winners can chime in here and talk about their biggest/longest downswing.

+1

30K downswing even at 2-5 sounds through the roof, and i would bet a healthy amount of money that you have blindspots (leaks) in your game that you arent aware of yourself if youre experiencing such of a downswing. I am sorry but i dont really care if its Ed Miller or anybody else who make such claims: to me it sounds like a way to justify way too big of swings for a certain stake, that is very likely happenning to you because you have weaknesses in your game and your game isnt as good as you may think.

Blindspots is incredibly challenging by the way, just because you cant know what you dont know. Its very likely you need other good players around you to pinpoint where you are bleeding money, and where your leaks are (wich you dont know that you have).

This is why i have always talked about the importance of mental stableness,patience and self discipline, and how big of an edge it is in livepoker to not lose your **** like ever. Much much more important than technical abilities. In livepoker you have to be balanced enough mentally that you can handle being in painful moments. And keep being present in the game- even if its painful. Cause if you cant, youre not thinking correctly anymore, your ranging gets unaccurate, you change your game to the worse because your losing and cant think straight anymore.

Like,how important it is to be able to remove yourself from the table to prevent tilting away money if you are getting steamed up and losing your mental stableness. Go get a drink, coffee, go home, grab a burger,go home and fire up pornhub i dont care: but you somehow need to get yourself away from the table when its appropriate.How important it is to keep calm, keep your patience and not starting to play garbage hands in order to chase losses when you are in a downswing. How important it is to not change your game when you are losing, for example gambling with a wider stackoff range or starts firing more big bluffs because youre losing it mentally.

I come back to these things over and over again in different discussions, so its quite interesting and always good reminders to make some reflections upon.

That being said, big downswings like 4-5K is certainly possible at 1-2 and 1-3 if the doomswitch really get turned on (wich it eventuelly does, so brace yourself), without you playing bad or spewing. But still, like mentioned from other posters, the likelyhood of bad play, mental tilt,worse decisionmaking and unaccurate ranging and those kind of stuff prolonging the "downswing" is very high.

Guess you're not very imaginative.

It blows my mind how optimistic most poker players are. What? A downswing of size X you say? That couldn't possibly happen to me or anyone good.

I've had a 4k downswing at 1/2. That's equivalent to 10k or more at 2/5, presumably more like 15k since my 2/5 winrate is likely lower and variance higher. And I'm a winning player. Actually I'm still in the downswing, and since past events don't influence future events in poker, there's no reason to assume I magically recover at this point just because if I didn't that would be too unreasonably large a downswing for a good player.

@Petrucci - I don't really tilt anymore. Not in any way I can detect, either while playing or afterward. I can't point to a single hand over this period I think I misplayed. In the past this was certainly not the case, and I've had several sessions where I lost 1k+ where if I hadn't tilted I probably could have halved my losses, but lately it's not like that. I mean it's certainly possible my play is being subtly affected in some way I can't detect, but when I review the hands my play looks totally standard. Just running into top of villains' ranges over and over. I just try to make the best decisions possible and I have no expectations from the cards. They fall as they fall. Eventually I should have correspondingly absurd upswings, but hasn't happened yet.

Shai: way to go man, seems like you have worked alot on plugging mental leaks regarding to tilt for example. My post on the topic wasnt aimed at you, it was just some general reflections on the topic, so hope it didnt come across like i was shooting at you.

You will get out if you keep playing your A game and moving forward. Even though it doesent feel like it when youre in the downswing and nothing goes your way at the tables. I know the feeling and how challenging it can be. Was attending my first Vegas trip during WSOP 2 years ago now, staying for 2 weeks to grind. In the softest games in the world filled with ridic bad drunken tourists i went directly on a $3500 downswing at 1-2 and 1-3. Like flopping 4 sets in one night, all of em up in flames by gutterballs for stacks. Running KK into AA 3 times in one night. Get set over setted repeteadly, and on the wrong side everytime. And it seems like it never ends when youre in it, thats the most challenging part: really believe that it can and will turn around if you keep going.

Like if the doomswitch gets dark, it gets dark and it can really make any sane person lose their **** and do stupid stuff.