Quote:
Originally Posted by johnnyBuz
As you can see, I really place no stock in the 1000 hour samples and freely admit variance is probably the biggest factor in determining your win rate/success. Two identical 2/5 players with the same solid fundamentals could end up $100,000 apart at the end of a year playing full-time (ie: Player A had a breakeven year playing solid poker but running bad, not getting into profitable situations etc. Player B had a $100,000 year playing solid poker, stumbling into profitable opportunity after profitable opportunity, constantly fading outs in the big pots, hitting his big draws in big pots, etc.).
Given a full-time player who plays 2000 hours a year, with a true win-rate of $50/h and a standard deviation of $425/h, their yearly standard deviation is ~$19,000 with an EV of $100,000. For another identical player to run breakeven for the year means he ran 100000/19000 = 5.3 SD below the mean. This equates to a probability of very roughly 1/20,000,000.
So you're right, it could happen.
I'm sure you could come back and say something regarding those statistics not quite reflecting reality, and for some reasons you'd be correct, but the truth is that it is insanely unlikely for a good player to run breakeven for 2000 hours, or even 1500 hours that you reported. If this happens at 2|5 it is far more likely the player is just not very good than he ran that badly.
I realize that this is a different example than what you brought up, and one player running $50k above EV while the other runs $50k below EV can happen much more easily, but if your EV at 2|5 is $50k/year playing 2000 hours then you're not a much of a professional.