blonde poker forum

this is just an observation - and certainly not a moan or a bad beat story

i have played many hundreds of SNG's on stars this year - nowhere near Tanks levels!! but enough.

It seems to me that on a dis-proportionate scale, favourite hands pre-flop are getting murdered on outdraws.

Now i stress that this is not me (although i have obviously been the victim and the fortunate winner on numerous times) but is an observation across all my games from ALL the players.

now we all know that no hand is full-proof but it seems to be happening so much per game.  I keep meaning to track the pre-flop all-ins but dont getround to it and have no software to plot them but i wonder if anyone else has any stats that they can prove to me that actually over time on stars the percentages are pretty much bang on.

Does anyone use Poker Tracker or SNGPT etc - that has access to these stats and can put my mind at rest?  Alternatively do the sites publish their stats?

As i said this is not a moan but just an observation and probably an inaccurate one as i havent been scientifically tracking.  Can anyone help me here?

I am so curious to see if the SNG's on stars follow the statistical variance.

Must admit the outdraws do make for a fun game as its a laugh seeing everyone (myself included at times!!) getting so worked up in the chatbox :D

Thanks

hi Triple

you can rest assured that if the hand distributions and winning % weren't aligned with the expected norms, you would have heard enough about it by now either on here or on the bigger US based forums


My poker-tracker statistics aligned pretty well, I got the hands at about the expected frequency. The problem with tracking winning percentages is that this statistic isn't solely reliant on the poker-site, its player dependant to an extent, and some people play AA/AK so badly, they will lose with it a lot more then they should, which leads then to bemoan the sites "rigged" status.

As always, the more poeple that see a flop, the less likely the favored hand pre-flop is to win at showdown.. but that is off set by a drastic increase in expectation the times it DOES win the hand.

i probably agree with you - but the outdraws across a whole table seem to be happening a lot more on stars at the moment.

However whether someone plays Ak badly or not the percentages are still the same against random hands.

Also i was only referring to pre-flop all ins

*sigh*

hey - i think you miss the point here!!!!

its an observation - i live with the beats, and i understand that we all live and die by them.

I was making an observation and asking a question as to whether people think there are more than usual (could just be a very strange statistical streak) or like totalise said, in his tracker they are pretty much on the level.

Was wondering how long it would take someone to get the wrong end and think this was a bad beat thread (WHICH IT AINT!!!) rather than tackle a genuine question. 45 mins good effort!!!

I'm afraid that's Flushy's standard "Is Internet poker rigged?" response.  :D

You play 2-5x more hands per hour online than you do live ( if you play stud eight or better on a high speed table that could well be 10-15 times higher :D ).
You are going to see more bad beats in 1hr online than you would in an evening of live play.

Also the skill level of low limit players tends to lend itself to more suckouts because:

1. People misplay big hands.
2. People like to call and bluff a lot.

So there you go.

Sometimes it just seems that way. The outdraws get noticed, the stand-ups don't.

In 2004, I ran $600 up to $27,000 on Stars SNG's, mainly $500's & $1,000's. I was just good. Or so I thought. My $27,000 then shrunk to $6,000 in quick time, & I thought I was getting beat after beat. But I was not - it's the way ones mind sees things, combined with normal variance. It's something people must overcome, feeling that they are getting short-changed by luck.

Remember, for every bad-beat, there is someone who got lucky - they are happy!! But few folks remember sucking out, they just remember being outdrawn.

It's the way the human mind works. Win the mind game & you are halfway there.

Stick at it buddy, it will turn.  But try & change that mindset, because it will screw your head up shocking if you think that either the site is rigged, or you are always unlucky. I have seen quite intelligent & normally rational people get their head all messed up over this "I'm so unlucky" thing.  Poker is a game that involves a lot of luck, but it comes in runs, both good & bad.

Keep your chin up fella, the luck will turn soon enough.

Oh, & ignore Flushy. We all do.

And the other thing to remember. There has to be a motive for fiddling, or "rigging", or a crime.

Why would PokerStars, or any other Cardroom, wanna "fix" SNG's? No motive. No point.

Just re-read Triple's Post, & he said that it was not him geting outdrawn, it was everyone. My apologies, I thought he said he was getting regularly muffed.

Memo to self. Read things properly.

Memo to others. Ignore me, I'm going doo-lally.

Triple X,

Speak to Frank Tank. :)up

The human mind is a pattern recognizing machine. Especially the mind of a poker player, which, with all the lies going on at a poker table, has been tuned up towards having above a high degree of cynicism.

It is therefore not unusual to believe that the underdogs are winning with too great a frequency.

Some have been so convinced that this was the case, they have attempted to prove it. Sampling millions of hands where the money/chips were in pre-flop.

Although several independantly observed studies began, no results were ever published.

Why was that? Probably because the results did not confirm the hypothesis. They set out to prove that internet poker is rigged, they ended up proving the opposite.

So when Ad Kd runs against  9s 3h you can expect the underdog to win around 31% of the time.

Like you I play Stars all the time. There are not any unusual patterns like this - and my PokerTracker confirms my decent starting hands still stand up the majority of the time (at least as much as the books tell you they should).

Like others said, it is simply a case that we always remember the times we are outdrawn, but rarely remember the times we outdraw others.

And there would be no point in any software provider being behind anything suspicious - everyone has paid the site money to enter SnG's, so why should they bother?

If anything, Stars is the best providor (but I would say that, wouldn;t I?) beating only blonde's Tribeca softwarte of course!

like i said - please do not think this is a moan, as it isnt - i was just observing a higher number of bad beats lately across the whole table.  In my last game, i pushed with AJs on the bubble and got called by AQ and obviously flopped the J - so i am well aware that the beats go for and against you.

Now according to the stats that should only happen c. 30% of the time.  What i am saying is that it 'appears' to be happening at least half if not more but i dont have the stats to back up my argument. I was merely asking whether anyone else had noticed this trend or if anyone had the stats to counter my thoughts.

I hear what Tank says in that our brain notices the times it happens and accentuates these and forgets about the times it doesnt so it nly highlights the bad beats more.

I also absolutely believe the major sites not to be rigged etc - especially Stars.  Also i completely understand that strange occurrences and abnormal runs can happen - like i said nothing is full-proof

I think i am going to look back at my last 10 tourneys just to see if i am talking cr*p.  Terribly small sample i know but at least its a start and it involves everyone's hands.  If i spot any anomaly then you can obviously tell me my sample was too small and if its all pretty standard and to the book then you can flame me for talking rubbish.

I just wonder at times whether the random hand generators etc are sooo random that it causes a deviation from the norm.

Anyway just my thoughts....

Will post results later...

And here was me thinking someone had started a new thread to congratulate Yogi on his achievements in winning the $20 deep stack tourney the other night!!  :blonde:

What i do notice about on-line players is that they tend to forget the calculations when all the chips went into the middle. If someone goes all in pre-flop with  Ad Kd and is called by  2s 8c then they will lose 30% of the time. However when the flop comes  Ac 7h 5d, the turn  3c and river  4s suddenly its "did you see the horrendous beat i took, i cant believe he hits runner runner with that bag of spanners - i was a 95% favourite after the flop"

Unfortunately the chips went in preflop not after the flop so the odds of you winning after the flop are irrelevant.

It appears that outdraws like the one above seem to happen more often than they should but at the end of the day this is just one of the ways that  Ad Kd will be beaten by  2s 8c 30 times out of 100 - however if the underdog pairs his two on the flop, thats far less memorable. Because the first senario looks worse, its more memorable and thats what your brain remembers.

greaty post matt! i have tried explaining that so many times to my home game buddies, oooo you hit a,I think if you can get your head round this concept then it Makes SH play so much easier.

absolutely agree matt - will post my results.

Dont need to explain percentages with me - i repeat yet again that i am just observing what i see at my table.

Quick example - take 4 hands.  excuse my maths, i am sure there are better experts out there

Fave  - Underdog

60 - 40 (W)
70 - 30 (W)
90 (W) - 10
80 (W) - 20

in the above example, the favourite wins the 2 massive favourites but loses the two that are nearer to a coinflip.  He has won 2/4.  50%.  Calculating it on a straight line basis he should win 4/4 100% but looking on the stats he should win 75% 3/4.  (add up the fave percentages =300 and the underdog = 100).

Actually in this example he wins 66% (40+30+90+80 / 60+70+10+20 =1.5 =66%)

so instead of holding up 75% of the time, he actually is winning 66% of the time - which is a deviation from the norm.

What i was hoping someone could prove to me is that on 1000s of hands on stars, the answer is still 75% and not 66%.  Yes in ths short term it may deviate but it shouldnt in the long term.

I hope my maths was right!!!

I will do this for my last 10 torneys which should have somewhere between 100-150 all ins

Do it for between 10,000 and 15,000 all-ins. Your findings from 100-150 won't mean much.

The long run is longer than you might think.

I think you almost prove the case there Triple, when you cite the AQ v AJ hand as an example of what you mean.

If you spend, say, 6 hours online evey day, you will see AQ v AJ a dozen or more times. AQ dominates, & is expected to win 7 times out of 10. (Yes, that's all it is - most peeps think it's more - it' not). It invariably does. You barely even notice, it's an ABC hand. But when the AJ wins - as it SHOULD, almost 3 times in 10, you Raise an eyebrow - "wow - you see that - AJ beat AQ"......

And thats how the mind plays tricks on you.

Hi Big Man, how are you?

Beating only ".......blonde's Tribeca softwarte...."

And there was me thinkng you were Simon, from The Sun. And all along you were working for the Grundiag.

Nice Post though.

Take care Simon!

Like i tried to explain in my earlier post, I'd even take this a step further again about the mind playing tricks on you. The AJ will beat the AQ three times out of ten but sometimes its the manner of how it beats it that sticks in the memory even more.

The number of times i've seen two players all in preflop with hands like AJ vs AQ are probably very numerous and like you say you know that the AJ will win 3 out of 10 times. When i'm not involved in the hand and the flop come 4-J-6, turn K, river 2 i probably dont bat an eyelid and get ready to continue with the next hand.

However when the flop come down A-Q-6, turn K, river 10 i sit there and i think "poor sod, how unlucky was that - flopped top two pairs and lost". This hand is more likely to stick in peoples memories than the first one - especially if you are not the player with the AQ.

As these hands happen more frequently online as (1) there are more hands being dealt than in a live tournament, (2) you are more likely to be playing more than one game at the same time and (3) players online will tend to call with worse hands, then of course you are going to see lots more examples of really bad beats - even when you arent involved in the hands.

My advice to people would be -  instead of watching for how often the bad beats happen would be learn to control your emotions better so that when they do happen you are still able to continue playing your a-game.

(this comment isnt aimed directly at TripleX who started the thread, just a general observation)

Like i said matt - this is not me talking about my own bad beats!!!  i never once have mentioned a bad beat of my own - infact the only time i have mentioned my own hand is an outdraw that i did on someone.

I am just merely trying to convince myself that AQ beats AJ in the long run 70% of the time - not 50% and not 90%.

This is merely an observation thread, please understand that!! I agree with Matt, people need to control their emotions at the bad beats and i am just trying to prove to everone especially myslef that there is no deviation and that in the long run the percentages do hold up.

Yes 100-150 preflop all in hands is too low a sample - but its a start

Oops. Must be that I was thinking of you Tikay and had warts on my mind! And me working for the Grundiag would be like Steven Gerard signing for Barnet.

Hope all is well!

This is why i made the last comment in my post about it not being aimed directly at you TripleX as i am aware that you are not talking about your own bad beats. However as hand histories and tournament histories are so easily available from pokerstars dont you think that other people havent already had the same thoughts you have.

There have probably been thousands of people just like yourself who have tried to prove that there are more bad beats occuring online than there should be according to the laws of statistics, probablility and averages. However once they trawl though tens or even hundreds of thousands of hands the conclusions they arrive at is that - maybe they dont happen as much as people claim and they are as close to the "norm" as possible.

I'm not saying that it wouldnt be a worthwhile study to carry out but if there was a problem i'm guessing someone would have already discovered it by now - some ex-employee of pokerstars with a grudge may have tipped of someone etc etc. Instead of spending all this time studying your hand histories for bad beats, study them for ways in which you could have improved your game to greater minimize your losses in the hands when you were beat and maximize your winnings in hands you were in front.

GOTCHA!

sometime I see people talk about the dodgy river card. THE LADBROKES RIVER  ;scarymoment; for example.
I was dealing a tournament in Nottingham a couple of weeks ago when I realised in the first round I didnt deal a single river card. infact the button went almost twice round, 18 hands before I dealt a river card. Could you imagine that happening in a $5 STT? ofcourse not. even at the low level I'm observing live Id guess around 30% of hands go to the river, let alone showdown. online (particualrly at lower stakes I wouldnt be suprised if someone told me it was 70%-80%, hence more river outdraws.

It's also worth mentioning that I've heard/seen this kind of thing written on every single online site I've ever played... e.g. "the VC river",  "River"Stars... "same old UB river, gets you every time..."

still saying 'sigh'