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peterbirksI love probability. I mean, I really love the philosophical side of probability, which is often what causes many poker players problems.
Take this situation. You have an open-ended straight draw with one card to come. What is the chance of you hitting your straight?
The answer, you might think, is 8/46.
However, one could equally reassonably answer that, since the position of the deck has already been decided, the probability is either 1, or 0.
Well, you might say. That's silly. OK. Suppose the dealer looks at the river card and then looks at you, but does not show it to anyone else. Now, what is the chance that you have hit your straight?
It's at this point that many poker players start tying themselves in probabilistic knots. If you then say that the dealer shows the river card to everyone in the room but you, then what is the chance that you will/have hit your straight? At this point most poker players, instead of confidently saying "8/46", collapse under the weight of the fact that everyone else knows the card, but he doesn't, and says "I don't know". Most poker players, for some reason, find it hard to cope with the fact that an event can have several different probabilities simultaneously, depending on who is doing the looking. It's like Einstein's own theory of relativity, but applied to the poker deck.
I was thinking of this when the exchanges opened up on the chances of Rooney playing in the World Cup. Now, there's a great probability question for you. Bloomberg happily reported: "Exchanges say chance of Rooney playing in cup rises from 35% to 71%". But this was just what the money line was saying. Did it reflect reality? Because here was a case where a probability was being assigned to something for which there were no actuarial tables and no dealer holding an already decided deck (unless you believe in God as dealer and the deck as predestination). All there was was a picture in the Sun of a scissor kick and film of training. Not, when you come down to it, a lot to go on.
I admire people like Tony Bloom who are prepared to sit down to make an educated guess on things like this. It goes so far beyond simple Maths, into I-don't-know-where.
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I've been four-tabling at $2-$4 this month on Party. At the beginning it was hard and I know that I have made mistakes worth about 20 big bets. I'm still up, marginally, after a large number of hands for this time of the month (4,000 or thereabouts). As I get more accustomed to the four-tabling, I should move closer to my estimated 1.5bb per hundred. I had been clocking up 2.2bb per 100 over the past couple of months, after some successful tweaks. And I was happily trucking along at 1.8bb per hundred until today, when the rails came off and I got cold-decked and rivered to death for a $140 loss in 400 hands. As they say in the trade, no blame. But the $80 or so that I lost to mistakes on other days now makes up more than my profit for the month. However, it's all good r&d. For a start, it makes three-tabling a lot less tiring! Standard deviation looks to me to be about 16 big bets an hour and 16 big bets every 100 hands (i.e., about 25 minutes).
I've also dabbled in the $5-$10 games on Virgin on the occasions when they have seemed good. Sometimes they look like the Bellagio $8-$16 tables on a Thursday morning -- the same old faces. But other nights there are some goldmines of fish. Obviously this puts volatility through the roof, since I'm not playing there that often and I'm only playing when the game is good. This led to a $190 loss last weekend about which I could do nothing, and a bit of a gain back tonight before I jacked it in through tiredness. Well, I do have to be up early in the morning.
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Take this situation. You have an open-ended straight draw with one card to come. What is the chance of you hitting your straight?
The answer, you might think, is 8/46.
However, one could equally reassonably answer that, since the position of the deck has already been decided, the probability is either 1, or 0.
Well, you might say. That's silly. OK. Suppose the dealer looks at the river card and then looks at you, but does not show it to anyone else. Now, what is the chance that you have hit your straight?
It's at this point that many poker players start tying themselves in probabilistic knots. If you then say that the dealer shows the river card to everyone in the room but you, then what is the chance that you will/have hit your straight? At this point most poker players, instead of confidently saying "8/46", collapse under the weight of the fact that everyone else knows the card, but he doesn't, and says "I don't know". Most poker players, for some reason, find it hard to cope with the fact that an event can have several different probabilities simultaneously, depending on who is doing the looking. It's like Einstein's own theory of relativity, but applied to the poker deck.
I was thinking of this when the exchanges opened up on the chances of Rooney playing in the World Cup. Now, there's a great probability question for you. Bloomberg happily reported: "Exchanges say chance of Rooney playing in cup rises from 35% to 71%". But this was just what the money line was saying. Did it reflect reality? Because here was a case where a probability was being assigned to something for which there were no actuarial tables and no dealer holding an already decided deck (unless you believe in God as dealer and the deck as predestination). All there was was a picture in the Sun of a scissor kick and film of training. Not, when you come down to it, a lot to go on.
I admire people like Tony Bloom who are prepared to sit down to make an educated guess on things like this. It goes so far beyond simple Maths, into I-don't-know-where.
++++++++++++++
I've been four-tabling at $2-$4 this month on Party. At the beginning it was hard and I know that I have made mistakes worth about 20 big bets. I'm still up, marginally, after a large number of hands for this time of the month (4,000 or thereabouts). As I get more accustomed to the four-tabling, I should move closer to my estimated 1.5bb per hundred. I had been clocking up 2.2bb per 100 over the past couple of months, after some successful tweaks. And I was happily trucking along at 1.8bb per hundred until today, when the rails came off and I got cold-decked and rivered to death for a $140 loss in 400 hands. As they say in the trade, no blame. But the $80 or so that I lost to mistakes on other days now makes up more than my profit for the month. However, it's all good r&d. For a start, it makes three-tabling a lot less tiring! Standard deviation looks to me to be about 16 big bets an hour and 16 big bets every 100 hands (i.e., about 25 minutes).
I've also dabbled in the $5-$10 games on Virgin on the occasions when they have seemed good. Sometimes they look like the Bellagio $8-$16 tables on a Thursday morning -- the same old faces. But other nights there are some goldmines of fish. Obviously this puts volatility through the roof, since I'm not playing there that often and I'm only playing when the game is good. This led to a $190 loss last weekend about which I could do nothing, and a bit of a gain back tonight before I jacked it in through tiredness. Well, I do have to be up early in the morning.
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Einstein on the baize
Date: 2006-06-07 07:45 pm (UTC)As in, "God does not play dice with the universe, but he does sometimes show the river card to everyone in the room but you"?
Elkan Allan
Date: 2006-06-26 09:15 pm (UTC)