Oh OK. Not sure I agree but I understand what you are getting at now. By not sure I agree, I just can't wrap my head around how it's different. I mean, you agree that if we manipulate a coin to flip heads 51% of the time after infinite trials we'd have an EV of 51% heads right?

Unless you want to get into arguments about how winrates are measured (ptbb/100) etc, I think it's perfectly valid to say that after infinite trials your winrate = EV = "true" winrate.

Wow that was a creepy mind meld there.

yeah i think i got confused myself, but that we're saying the same thing

If you would say that your 20BI downer would disappear in the infinity, then you would be saying exactly that you are "due" to run good... I dont think thats correct.

That would be weird tbh. Imagine you play 2nl, lost 100 flips in a row (so you're 100bi below ev), then lets say I go play 5000nl for infinity hands. I'm suppose to run at EV line in the infinity. But 5000nl isnt the same stakes as 2nl. So I should run at EV in infinity (lets say we express EV in buyins)? No.

does any of this matter?

i mean, suppose someone showed us a graph where a person ran below EV for 10 million hands and never caught up (assume that's his entire life)? ok, so what?

you can say that about anything. oh there was just a disastrous earthquake in haiti, so what ?

if you have nothing else more interesting to say, why dont you stfu ?

these concepts are very counter-intuitive and without a proper mathy approach you can't understand them. Your logic in your sentence is extremely flawed.

why? you're basicaly saying chance has a memory? Because now that I'm -10bi today, I'm suppose to be running slightly better in the infinity, because else I would still be -10bi below ev, is this what you're saying? If so, yup im lost

if its too long/boring to explain, can you link me to a wiki or gimme a term to google.

you ok?

anyways, to explain more fully what i was trying to say: someone shows you the graph i mentioned. does the revelation of what the graph shows matter to whether or not you sit at the poker table and try to make the most +EV decision? i can't see how it would. cards have no memory. +EV is +EV. and that's that. so why does it matter?

No. The way infinity "erases" a 20BI downer is not by macigaclly bringing you back to even, it's just with regards to the amount of hands played, 20BI becomes insignificant.

You can follow the link I posted ITT.

sry i thought u were just trolling, I apologize for my rudeness . I'm kinda tilted but it's no excuse.

I am not sure I get what your question though. If we want to understand the concept of EV, even if it doesn't matter in game, why shouldn't we ?

offcourse it becomes insignificant, but it still remains there doesnt it? In the infinity everything is insignificant, but yeah.

edit:
Funny, I used that link(the one ITT) for a presentation at school.

yup thats the whole point.

Let's do a little thought experiment

If your winrate is exactly zero BB/hour and you start with a $10000 role (variance is a bitch) and go play 2NL for a very long time, and you repeat this experiment a lot of times, on average you'll have $0 profit thus ending up with 10000.
Now imagine you start with $10010, and you repeat the experiment. The odds of you ending up with $10010 are exactly the same as the odds of ending up at $10000 in the previous experiment. I suppose you all agree here.

Now imagine this:
A new experiment starts, and the player has received $10000. Tomorrow the experiment will begin but our volunteer has a poker-addiction and starts playing some poker already. By the end of the evening he's up $10, thus his bankroll is at $10010. The next day the experiment starts. On average the poker player will end up with $10010 (or $0 profit).

One can conclude that earlier wins or losses do not interfere with future profit. I hope you all understand my point.

So to all players running bad: stop asap!

Yeah thats what I'm talking about and agree with. Else it would mean that whenever you decide to "calculate your EV in the long run" you should take into concideration the games you allready played, which doesnt make sense.
Yesterday is a proven fact, so it doesnt have any meaning in future calculations. That these yesterday losses are insignificant in the infinity and could be seen as 0 (so in the infinity you will run at EV) is true too (thats what streamliner means I think) but with my broken english I cant express myself the way I want to ;<

edit:
crap didnt see streamliners reply.

Even if after infinity hands you somehow manage to get back to expectation the poker gods are just going to doomswitch you harder to make up for it. Don't taunt them.

The problem is you're combining dealing with averages and absolutes. If the volunteer plays poker earlier on average he's up $0. Which means after the experiment he will end up with on average $0. When dealing with absolutes, the poker player plays earlier and will have a spread of possible starting rolls for the experiment that include $9990 rolls and $10010 rolls, and at the end he won't end up with $10000 but a spread of possible outcomes that depends on the SD of his 0bb/100 win rate, which depends on exactly how long "very long" is (central limit thm gives a variance of 1/sqrt(N) which only goes to zero as N->Infinity). So basically if he plays for very long it doesn't matter when he starts, that first day of play could be put at the end. In your math I think you're essentially assuming that his winrate is different in the experiment (0 bb/100 hands plus spread) then before the experiment ($10 over however many hands he played with NO spread), which is flawed.

You aren't saying chance has memory, it's just that the human brain is not designed to understand the concept of infinity. If I go on a million BI heater, take my play to infinity, I would be up only my "true" winrate. You can add or subtract whatever you want to infinity and it's still infinity.

Infinite BIs -20 BIs = Infinity. Infinite BIs + 100000000000 = Infinity, etc etc etc etc etc

There's a math "proof" (and yes I know I'm abusing quotes today) where you can show that 1 = 2, but the flaw is that you have to compare an infinite series to a finite series and thus it doesn't work. People ITT are doing the same thing.

yeah I get it, didnt take into account that infinity makes any number...insignificant. Cheers for explaining though.

This is 100% correct. Your expected lifetime gains/losses in EV are exactly what they are now. If I am 20 buyins below EV, that is my longterm expected gain/loss, that is also the point of convergence. EV won't diverge as Stream mentioned (although I haven't read everything in this thread so it may have been changed), EV will converge to whatever the scoreboard is at now.

Also, although our longterm EV is still -20 buyins, we will reach 0 buyins below EV at some point with a probability of 100% because our sample is infinite. This does not, however, mean that we can expect to converge to 0.

It is kind of mindblowing but every value will be hit at some point with a probability of 100%. In an infinite sample we will be both 3483482 buyins above and 9133372492 buyins below EV. The reason being is that each has a infinitesimally small, but still nonzero, finite probability. Any event that has a non-zero finite probability will occur over an infinite number of trials (even more mind blowing it won't occur just once, but an infinite number of times)

A 20 BI downswing to start doesn't get erased at any point. It is a new starting point that you can expect to on average experience true EV over infinite.

example: A 100% break-even player is down 50$. obviously he is running below EV. If he plays infinite games from this point on he should expect on average to still be down 50$.

infinity sucks imo . i get it now, we don't even exist in the infinity..

I hope you can see how this is a fairly poor comparison.

This is completely correct. This conversation really has virtually no bearing on actual poker strategy. It's just a way to make people feel better about running under ev.

There's no reason for you to not understand the concept, and the pursuit of understanding it is fine and dandy and all. That being said, I think that there's at least the implicit understanding that if something is posted in a poker forum it might just help you get better at poker. Although maybe the LC thread disproves that idea...

I feel that, in general, the practice that some people have of constantly looking at, or worrying about, or projecting their theoretical EV in a vain attempt to feel better about themselves is energy that is really grossly misspent. And this is coming from someone who at one time or another has run horrifically under EV.

No offends, but it actually means the exact opposite. If you run rly bad now, there is no magical carpet ride that will give you an upswing in your next 100k hands or what so ever.

Since alot of people seem to misunderstand this concept it looks like a valid thread to me. Oh and dont forget the LC tag is added.