Actually this isn't possible to calculate without some assumptions about the underlying distribution of win rates, and then an application of Bayes' theorem. It's quite technical so I will give a more simplified example.

Suppose we flip a coin 100 times and score +1 for head and -1 for tails. Your observed result is, lets say, +10, or +0.1 units per trial. You then ask what the chances are you win more than 0.05 units per trial 'longterm'. If we assume the coin is fair then the chance is zero. If we assume the coin came from a sample of two coins, one of which is fair and one of which is rigged to come heads 60% of the time, then our observed score is equally likely to have come from either coin, so the cahnce is 0.5. If we assume that the coin could be biased anywhere between always heads and always tails and constuct a uniform distribution of coins we get a different answer.

Actually that simplified example wasn't that great, so lets try a poker example. Suppose you are one of a set of players, 80% of whom lose 1bb/100 playing poker, 10% of whom break even, and 10% of whom win 1bb/100. You observe that over 10000 hands you won 1.15 bb/100 with a s.d of 2.1bb/hand. With this underlying distribution you are actually most likely to be one of the -1bb/100 players even with this observed data, simply because most of the population is and the data is not conclusive enough.

Having thoroughly confused you with those examples back to the point in hand.

It is *impossible* to know how likely you are to have 6% or less ROI without knowing what the population distribution looks like for the games you are playing. i.e., what percentage of the population as a whole has 0-1% ROI, 1-2% ROI, 2-3% ROI and so on. Obviously the mean is going to be around -9% ROI but what the spread of the data looks like I'm not sure. I suspect a normal distn with mean -9% and s.d about 15%. Then again it might not be normal at all in which case we are totally ****ed in terms of calculating this without a computer simulation.

If anyone has a better idea of an estimate for the population distribution of Sng players ROIs let me know as the problem has piqued my interest.

burden2 - I need to know the standard deviation of your ROI per event to be able to estimate your actual ROI from the sample and the population distribution. If you know how to calculate this please post it in the thread, otherwise just post the numbers of each finish you had (i.e. number of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 'noncashes'). I'm pretty busy at the minute but as it's a very interesting mathematical problem I will do it on Monday when I have a day off, if you post the info needed.

What I can say without looking at your s.d is that I suspect it will be more than 50% likely your ROI is 6% or less, assuming my population distribution is reasonably correct. After all you will be 15% above the population mean even with 6% ROI, which is 1.0 s.ds, so only 15.9% of players are better than this. The sample of 300 games is (I suspect, without seeing the s.d. its impossible to be sure), so small, that Bayes theorem will say you are still likely to be in the <6% bracket. It's similar to the ring game example mentioned above. Statistically it's known as 'regression to the mean'. Your actual longterm score is likely to be closer to the mean than any observed sample (only likely, not certain).

In fact it would not totally amaze me if given a sample of 300 games at 15% ROI you still have like reasonable non-zero chance to be a losing player (say 10% chance or so).

p.s. mean -9% s.d. 15% puts a breakeven player at +0.6s.d. Then we would have 28.4% of all players being better than breakeven. Does this sound about right to those of you who play 1 table SNG?

I was going to post this, but didn't notice that he explicitly stated it was all-in preflop (though I heavily suspect it was).
Spadebidder since you're a statistical genius can you check my post above

I'm not, but I agree that ROI isn't something you should calculate the chance of based on an assumed distribution with one known data point. It is what it is, period. It's a result. That said, you can certainly plug in a mean of 9%, or 15%, or 6% to a normal distribution of a given sample size and see how many SDs away from the mean some other figure falls. I just don't think doing so gives any meaningful information at all. Some guys in the probability forum may have ideas about this.

Saying that "my actual ROI is X but I think it is really Y" seems kind of nonsensical.

To elaborate, we have some population distribution of ROIs. We know that the poster is taken from this underlying distribution and we have some observed sample of the posters results, with an ROI per event a standard deviation per event. We then construct a normal distribution of the posters actual long-term ROI using bayes' theorem. (or better we discretize the underlying distribution then end up with a discrete distribution for the poster).

I've posted in the probability forum in case any of them has any idea what the underlying distribution looks like.

Using 'actual' in this way is confusing as it is the opposite of standard statistical usage almost. The ROI that the poster has written in his PokerTracker or wherever is simply a sampling of a small set of results. It is not his actual ROI in a statistical sense.

Example: I flip a coin randomly plucked from my pocket 100 times and record 58 heads. My coin does not have an 'actual' chance of being heads 0.58 of the time, even if there was some small chance the coin was not fair.

But aside from language quibbles this is *exactly* what we can do rigorously. We observe an ROI of X over 300 trials. We know what the population distribution is and from this we can calculate a distribution for the players 'actual longterm' winrate using Bayes' theorem.

Edit: anyway just go look in Math of Poker if you have the book, the general principle is set out from pages 35-43. It's probably explained there way better than I can do it, and there is an almost identical example.

All this talk about standard devihooie is making my head hurt. Please stick to talking about how rigged you feel the sites are.

In before merge.

I only play cuz its rigged for me.

I get rakeback from Fulltilt but I don't get to keep any of it. Every week, right after the rakeback is deposited into my account, I go on losing streaks where the rake back is lost. This has gone on for over a year now. Put me on the rigged side

lol

Quite a large percent of the people believe the sites cheat

quite a large percent of people are, shall we say, less than intelligent

Naw, Your less than intelligent. Basicly in lehmans terms:

We're playing in a Foriegn Country where your not allowed to be in, We have no rights, we can't seek any legal action in case of fraud, we have no proof of audits other then some random company slapping a stamp on it and saying it's "good," cannot prove it's legit, cannot prove we're playing against actual live players 100% of the time.

But at the same time we can't prove that they do commit fraud, rig the deck, seat house players, enable bots...ect. But as customers and players we should be questioning these things. There's too much speculation and too many unanswered questions for us to not speak out and question the integrity. These things should be more transparent.

If everybody was like you Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet would still be scamming people out of billions by now. Way to be a hero. And for F%#ks sake, your from Ohio?

I got this far.

lol, exactly, I didn't get any further than that either. It's just so funny that somebody talking about intelligence completely shows off his lack of intelligence in the first line.

Whereas if everybody was like you, AP and UB would have been caught because...you have such great instincts?

To believe the sites are honest shows enourmous nievity and stupidity.

Are some Online Poker Sites cheating players?

Bastard!

Is the "Great" thread not enough for you?

Well I'm really just countering qpw's stupid poll. Something like this should be in the "great" thread IMO.

You believe that the sites are certainly rigged despite there being not one shred of credible evidence that they are.

We believe that the sites are probably not rigged because there is not one shred of credible evidence that they are.


Any disinterested party will natuarally tend to think that one of those views is more intelligent, logical, and resonable.

Can you guess which one?

DUCY?

Can you explain why you think the poll is stupid.

ISTM that you have seen the response of a couple of ******s who do not believe sites are rigged but didn't engage their brians to wonder what the poll is about and just waded in with a knee-jerk reaction and being a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic yourself mindlessly joined them.

As you clearly believe that the sites rig the deal can you come up with a rational, coherent, reason why it is stupid to ask people how often they believe that their hands have been rigged?

Have a very careful think before replying.

lol

(Not a sarcastic lol, just a lol)

EDIT: And yes, my other 5,999 posts contained nothing more interesting.

I'm not a lawyer but I believe that U.S. residents are allowed to visit the Channel Islands, Gibraltar, and the Isle of Man, and that they have legal rights just like anyone else