* Introduction *
Quote:
Originally Posted by parable of the lamp post
A man is walking down the street and he comes across a drunk near a street light crawling around on his hands and knees.
man: “what are you doing?"
drunk: “looking for my car keys."
The man decides to help the drunk look for his keys and 10 minutes of fruitless searching ensue
man: “we’ve been over this area several times and your keys are not here. Where did you lose them?"
drunk: “I dropped them over there (pointing to his car in the distance)."
man: “why are you looking for your keys over here if you know you lost them over by your car?”
drunk: “because the light is good here and it is dark over there by the car.”
tldr;
The problem with all-in-EV is not that it is a bad statistic but that folks treat all-in-EV as if it is a measure of their overal poker luck. Like the blind man who feels the elephant’s tail and declares that the elephant is like a rope, you look at your all-in-EV graph and declare that your luck has been good / bad / neutral when there are so many aspects of poker that are driven by luck that are not measured by all-in-EV.
* All-in-EV defined *
The
Holdem Manager FAQ describes all-in-EV thus:
Quote:
Originally Posted by HEM FAQ
Overview:
What is EV and how does it work?
Answer:
EV stands for Expected Value and is a mathematical formula based on when a hand goes all-in before the river.
An EV line in a graph is the same stat that you see in the reports section called $ (EV adjusted).
So how do we interpret the line to see if we're running hot or cold? We'll define a few stats first.
EV $ Diff (found in the Hands Tab)
This is calculated by taking your equity% of the total pot when you go all in and comparing that to what you actually won. So let's say I go all in with AA on an Axx flush draw flop against a flush draw. I'm 80.5% to win with my set in a $400 pot.
80.5% x $400 = $322 so what it's saying is on average that I should win approximately $322 on average when I go all in with a set of Aces here vs. his flush draw.
If I win, I would win $400, so I've won $78 more than I would on average i.e running good/okay.
If I lose, I win $0, so I'm running $322 worse off than I would on average so im running bad.
And PokerTracker3
support saying the same thing:
Quote:
Originally Posted by PT3 support
For all hands that were all-in preflop, on the flop, or the turn, instead of seeing your actual results graphed you see your expected results at the time of the all-in.
* All-in-EV in the context of your whole game *
Here are some stats from my PT3 DB for this year:
- 107,716 hands played (all 50 NL Rush)
- hands that qualify for all-in-EV formula: 389: result: +1,416 bb above EV (expected -316 bb) (yeah, running good in All-in-EV)
- non all-in-EV hands where hero VPIP: 15,244: result +13,733 bb
By all-in-EV standards I am running hot but when you look at the bigger picture the all-in-EV hands are a small part of the final results. I could be running super hot or super cold in the non-all-in-EV hands. One thing is certain: the all-in-EV stats tell us nothing about what is happening in non-all-in-EV hands.
*
All-in-EV misses many other luck factors
In poker, the normal distribution turns up with a fractal like regularity. For every situation that occurs according to probability there is a corresponding normal distribution. all-in-EV measures how far your results are from the mean for exactly one of these situation.
Here is a list of aspects (situations) of no limit hold’em where there is an expected value and normal distribution that is not measured by all-in-EV. The point of this exercise is to see how much bigger (qualitatively, if not quantitatively) the elephant of poker luck is than the “elephant tail” of all-in-EV that folks like to use as their main barometer of luck.
- How often are you dealt AA, KK? There is a normal distribution for this.
- How often do your pocket pair flop sets? Normal distribution.
- How often do you get AA vs KK and vice versa?
- When you do get AA and villain has KK, how often is villain an agressive fish? How often is he a nit?
- ditto for KK vs AA: what is your distribution of villains here?
- you bet/bet/shove when you flop a set against a drooler and he calls (it doesn’t matter the result -- all-in-EV ignores this because the money went in on the river.)
- oh so many more ...
Please add interesting examples of non-all-in-EV poker luck to this list.
* Distribution of nits and maniacs *
Consider the following situation:
100bb effective stacks
Scenario 1
UTG, who is a confirmed full ring nit (e.g. xxvinniepoohxx) raises to 4x.
it is folded around to you in the BTN and you have KK (or QQ) and raise it to 12x, nit villain pops it up to 36x, you shove villain calls. Villain has AA (are we surprised?) and it holds up.
I imagine many of you reading the hand history above are thinking “there are several nits that I could get away from KK,QQ when they show strength” or "I would never 3bet the nit's UTG open raise". In any case, a competent player with KK-QQ HU against an UTG nit has a good chance of figuring out where he is at.
Scenario 2
Now consider the same hand but UTG is a maniac (60/50/5) with a PF shoving range of TT+, AQ+. You stack off PF (as you should) and villain shows AA (damn, the top of his range)
When you have KK and villain has AA, how often is it scenario 1 (better for you since you can get away) vs scenario 2 (worse because you have to stack off behind)? This is another normal distribution.
You could be running really bad in that:
- most of the times you have AA and villain has KK, villain is a nit who never gets stacks in with less than a set
- most of the times you get KK vs AA, villain is a loose drooler you feel compelled stacking off to
but all-in-EV does not measure this kind of luck.
Sure, you flopped sets slightly more often than expected over the last 200k hands but it happened way more often when villian was a set mining nit agains whom you are never getting any money after flop from unless they have a set or better and you rarely made a set against a maniac...
The distribution not just of hands (how often did I get a premium pocket pair, how often did I hit my set, how often did I hit my draw) but of villains and coolers has a huge impact on results and all-in-EV measures none of this.
You could run 1 standard deviation above all-in-EV for your entire life and 2 standard deviations below expectation in all the forms of luck that EV does not measure and, if you thought all-in-EV was the beginning and end of luck you would think you were running hot but suck at poker.
----
* Exercises for the student *
Problem 1
Let us call:
- luck-a: all-in-EV
- luck-b: all the other luck in poker (flopping sets, getting good hands against droolers, having droolers catch decent hands against your monsters, ...)
given 1000 players how many players will be both:
- > 1 standard deviation in luck-a
- < -1 standard deviation in luck-b
over a reasonably large sample of hands (e.g. 1 million)?
Problem 2:
Given
luck-a and
luck-b definitions above ...
If you could run -1/2 standard deviation below EV for one of the types of luck and +1 standard deviation above EV for the other type of luck for the rest of your life, which would you chose to run hot in,
luck-a or
luck-b?
------------------------
Meh, I'm tired of editing this and am afraid I might click the wrong button and lose everything so here we go ...
Last edited by Max; 08-15-2021 at 12:07 AM.