Thursday, November 30, 2006

 

Jumping The Shark

Have poker blogs jumped the shark ? It kind of seems like they have. Several of the blogs on my list have puffballs blowing through them, and I suppose this one does too. Others have moved on to other topics, there being a whole wide world out there, apparently. While I feel I should at least make some kind of monthly report, I don't have much to add here either.

There are a few interesting things I have changed in how I approach Sit and Goes, but these are just too valuable to post, sorry. Both in terms of others using them against me and realising what I'm doing to them. I'm currently splitting my time between Pokerstars and Full Tilt, playing $100 turboes, and the player pool is small enough that I come across a lot of names quite often. It will be interesting to see if they catch on to me anyway, but so far I haven't noticed many people calling me down with hands I'm not expecting to see.

You might be interested in some numbers I worked out today though. Say you're playing $105+9 (or $110+9 on Full Tilt) with an ROI of about 12.5% (and so a profit of around $15 before rakeback and bonuses). I don't know if this is a reasonable top rate, it's very hard to tell (as we will see). Furthermore, you're playing 500 a month. At the end of the year, what's your 95% (2 standard deviations) confidence band ? What would be your biggest downswing in a typical year ? Playing 25 a day, what would be your best and worst days ? Guess before you look at my answers (in the first comment).

Comments:
This is all done with Monte Carlo simulation in a spreadsheet.

First of all, we can be fairly sure about the standard deviation. Using percentages of 14.5% for 1st, 13.5% for second and 11.2% for third gives an ROI of 12.6% and an average profit of $15.05, using the $110+9 buyin.

Standard deviation coverges much more quickly than mean. The SD comes in around $185. So, over 6000 trials (one year's worth), the 2SD band is +- $28K. So, while your yearly expectation is $90K, you can only say that there's a 95% chance you'll make between $62K and $118K.

In a year you'll most likely have a downswing of at least $4K somewhere along the line (in five years, probably $6K). A 15-game losing streak wouldn't be unexpected. On your best day you might win $2300 ; on your worst you might lose $1500.

This is all "probably" and "might" because I've done it by Monte Carlo simulation instead of working out the theoretical values (nuts to that). I think it's interesting though, and generally the potential swings are much bigger than most people would think.

Andy.
 
yup,
My intuition was +-15k. Far enough that I had to check your numbers =)
Aksu
 
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