Being a nit in fields of loose bad players, making good reads and inducing fish to spazz against him by being Phil Hellmuth at the table

There is a positive correlation between intelligence and academic performance but there is a much stronger correlation between self-discipline and academic success.

Assume there are 100 equally-skilled players in some universe who each play 500 events against each other. Now simulate this universe 1,000 times and examine the distribution of the maximum # of bracelets and final tables. Here are the results:



So in this simulated environment, there is a player who wins at least 13 bracelets in 41.2% of all universes.

I think he takes advantage of his table image really welll

interesting, We can conlcude that if you play 500 wsop events and you are at least at neutral ev youre going to win at least 12 bracelets 75.4% of the time, again more evidence that Phil Hellmuth doesn't have some mytical white magic powers and really is just another player.

Does WSOP make available the entire results list (including names of entrants even if they didn't cash) for their bracelet events going back to...say, the 1980s?

It should be fairly straightforward to do an analysis to determine whether by just how much PH is exceeding the expected performance of a player of median abilities (if at all).

Bush scored 1206 on his SAT, which was above the 95th percentile. Not far out of Mensa range.

Here: http://hem.bredband.net/b153434/Index.htm

Use the calculator at the bottom.

Err.... Based on his SAT results, academics estimated GWB's IQ to be close to 120; one of the lowest among Presidents of the last 200 years. (FWIW, JFK was probably wasn't much "cleverer".)
Carter's IQ was at least 130.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Pr...s_by_academics

/derail

Unless you have IQ or SAT scores for all the Presidents of the last 200 years that comparison is impossible and based purely on whim. Bush's SAT score was indeed in the top 5% (and it was equivalent to an IQ of 127, not 120).

I think an average of 100 players per tourney is too low. Definitely in the last 10 years there's been a higher average than that, and considering that PH has probably played somewhere in the range of 300 WSOP tournaments during that time, the average would be higher.

Also, in your simulation, these 100 players are the population, but in a real-world scenario that wouldn't be the case. I have no idea what the population would be but my guess would be at least 10 times as large, with only 10% or 20% playing in 90% or more of the 500 tournaments.

I hope he makes more WSOP Bracelets, final tables and cashes just to piss off the haters.

No live player is ever going to play enough events to satisfy the on-line MTT +/- EV numbers guys lol!

So every live MTT player who ever lived and has turned a profit is under the scrutiny of NVG as probably being a lucky mofo?

You do realize that an IQ of 120 would put him in the top 10% of the general population right? Not exactly compelling evidence that he is not intelligent. Actually, the number I see in your link for George W. Bush is 125, which would put him in the top 5% of the general population as I asserted.

I was not questioning Carter's IQ. Quite the opposite actually.

cherish your tournament life and run good

/thread

yes, thats why it is prolly impossible to be a live mtt pro unless you are either backed, sponsored or play <1000$ mtts where the play is truly horrible.

You are right, this simulation is not true a representation of our reality, but that was not exactly the purpose.The point is that (1) sorting by bracelets and (2) developing theory based on results is not a great logical approach mostly due to the distributional properties of the maximum. Let's consider one explanation that several people have provided: Phil must be doing something special that no one else understands in order to produce such results. Given what we know about tournament variance¹ and how poker edges behave, this explanation seems very unlikely. On the continuum

variance |---------------------------| white magic

the truth almost certainly lies somewhere in the middle, but (imo) is much closer to variance than to some secret elite strategy that none of the many poker experts understand, especially when some of these supposed strategies have been shown to be bad².

¹See NoahSD's simulations for MTT variance.
²See Theory of Doubling Up, pg. 323 in Mathematics of Poker (Chen & Ankenman).

The sims are in line with what I said earlier: The higher your edge, the lower your variance. But it's PH, an abrasive personality, so that doesn't apply here. Must be nothing but luck.

holy **** there is an NVG post with footnote sources. I have seen everything.

P

oh LOL the irony. Stop trolling? then you post that? Where is your evidence of Bush being intelligent at all? He is so stupid, he actually looks stupid.

thats not necessarily truth. It may seem like that because if you have a huge edge even if you are running bad you will still end up making money most of the time however that doesn't mean is lower variance. Variance is determined by your playing style not by your winrate.

Yes, If you play exclusively live MTTs you are either very very lucky or insane. Could possibly be practical if you have a very generous staking arrangement.

The path to success as a live MTT player is to bink a tournament as early in your career as possible.

This. Poker players are routinely confusing different things related to variance as being variance itself. What higher EV reduces is downswing probability, which is a function of variance, but not variance itself. If anything, higher EV probably increases variance just due to how the math works out, even ignoring the playing style.

This.

Wow. This is more impressive than the bracelets.

Except Hellmuth probably played less than 500 events against more than 100 opponents on average.

If I take numbers out of my ass, I can also come up with something untrue.

And I still don't even get those numbers. If you play 1 event with 100 people, you should win it 1% of the time. How does that make 12 wins in 500 events?