Quote:
Originally Posted by Avaritia
Just to chime in, the whole online vs live lol sample size variance etc etc debate has some flaws.
Yes online you experience hundreds of thousands of hands and thus your play approaches a "normal" distribution (this includes your variance over said six figure hand sample size).
But online you are playing against sophisticated players who understand poker theory and strategy, you are 6betting pf when you are 51/49 vs an opponents range. Because you are working with razor thin edges, you need a vast sample to negate variance and understand your true wr.
But in live you play most poker post flop against total droolers. An intelligent player's wr should be mainly determined in turn and river play imo, I know mine is. So while in live we have a much smaller sample to work with, we have much larger edges. Alot of my opponents are willing to put their stack in ott with a non nut bare flush draw. It's hard, even for variance, to keep us in downswing if we are maximizing 80/20 edges all the time. Obviously be stretches are possible over a few hundred hours bc yes a few bad sessions at a great table can dent your wr, but I think a lot of downswing is human error, not variance.
The idea that "you never really will know if you're truly a live winning player bc sample will never be large enough" is flawed for this reason. In live play we are maximizing substantial edges.
I think I'm beginning to finally coming around to agreeing with this. And yet at the same time, I still think I'm being results oriented over a lol sample size.
ETA: In the end, it all boils down to one extremely simple thing: table selection. Against droolers where we can simply patiently wait for huge edges before getting it in and passing on the small edges, we'll probably typically crush fairly safely. As soon as you remove those droolers from the table, not so much.
ETA#2: I've just realized I had a very similar discussion (re: table selection) about our hockey team in the dressing room after our game last night. Our opponents, who literally could barely skate at the beginning of the season (but had good puck handling, passing and shooting skills thanks to a ballhockey background) have now learned to skate; so while we beat them quite handily early in the season, they beat us quite soundly last night (game was closer than it should have been thanks to our goalie *brag*). Anyhooooooo, everyone is sitting around our dressing room thinking what they could have done better in order to make this game more competitive, as well as all the other games (we're getting soundily drubbed most games). All I could do was laugh. We're 20+ years older than most teams. Every other team has at least one hotshot (we have none). The other teams have some real shooters (we don't). The other teams have legitimate defenseman (we lost our only one before the season started). The other teams play smarter hockey. They are more skilled overall in the basics (taking a pass, making a pass, being aware, etc.). And yet our team is still under the illusion that we can compete if we just tweaked a few things here and there, or this guy hadda shown up, or this, or that. Lol. They just can't quite grasp that: we're sitting a freaking awful table and have no long term chance of competing succesfully on a game to game basis. My teammates would be awesome to have at the poker table $$$ earning-wise as they have every attribute of a losing poker player (delusional, no awareness of where they actually sit in the food chain, "Hey, I won one! I can do that every night! Turns out I am good and can compete!", etc.). /rant (frustrating and rather unenjoyable summer hockey season, playoff beard is being trimmed in next night or two)
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Last edited by gobbledygeek; 07-25-2013 at 04:53 PM.