Tuesday, May 25, 2010

-1ptBB Handicap

Expanding on the rant in my previous post, I thought it would be fun to post a graph of my AIEV over my last 175k hands, which for me is right around a full month worth of volume. In it, you'll see that I'm just over 3,300bbs below AIEV. That's 33 buy-ins.


As any poker player should be aware, AIEV is only a fraction of the variance involved in poker. That being said, it is by far the easiest to measure (and as long as you're not getting a short stack in against several big stacks in a multi way pot, 100% accurate) and absolutely non-trivial in the grand scheme of things.

To put things in perspective, my AIEV over the last 175k hands has resulted in my winrate being handicapped very close to a full ptBB/100 (or 2 bb/100). If you do the exact math, it's actually ~.942ptBB/100.

To a true break even FPP pro, this kind of variance over this kind of sample could easily annihilate any sort of profitability they might have. To a beginning player trying to learn and move up, it could annihilate their bankroll along with their will to play or belief they are capable of beating the games. I'm thankful that I don't fall into either of these categories.

Variance is an ugly, ugly mistress.

On a completely unrelated note, emulated fan translated Seiken Densetsu 3 with SNES clone USB controllers on a big screen TV is awesome. I love technology. That is all.

3 comments:

Josh (Pokerarb) said...

Pretty nasty... It's clear from your graph you stay pretty level headed when running awful, any tips :)?

Ronfar3 said...

For me it's just a personality trait I think. Running like ass upsets me, but being upset doesn't affect my play much if at all. Hopefully one day it won't bother me nearly as much, though I'm not certain I'll ever get there. Something to work on I guess. If being upset does cause you to alter your play and tilt spew, I guess it's a lot more important that you start getting less upset when running bad!

Unknown said...

Hey man, I've been running 1ptbb -aiev for 450k hands, and -0.5ptbb for the rest of my career before that... just gotta keep hoping for when it turns around. Fingers crossed!