Math and a Lifetime

[Govman6767]

Seeing as I have nothing to do in Iraq but think here is something I put to you.

Flip a coin odds say you have a 50/50 chance of either heads or tails coming up. Okay you flip it 20 times and you get 15 heads and 5 tails. Flip it 40 times you get 30 heads and 10 tails. Now according to the law of probabilities the more times you flip the coin the closer you should come to 50/50.

So you flip the coin 1million times 520,000 heads and 480,000 tails which is much closer to 50/50 than the 30 to 10 proposition after 40 flips.

Now let's throw in a Poker prospective. You have ESP (Pre-flop only) And the only hand you are willing to play is AA against and underpair KK-22 and you only play when you know you will be heads up All-In against this person.

You are a major fav here 3-1 or 4-1 does not matter could be 20-1 the point is that [b]Even though you are a major favorite ALL THE TIME. [b] With pure chance being involved over the course of your lifetime for whatever that reason may be you will only be involved in a finite # of hands as opposed to being able to play this hand for 500 years 1000 years etc.

Logically speaking if you played this hands 10000 times in your lifetime you may have only won this hand 3000 times out of 10000 times. Luck speaking this would be the worst run of cards or numbers one could ever think of. But mathmatically speaking it could just be that the hand had to be played 1million times for you to achieve an average of 750,000 wins and 250,000 losses.

The point i'm trying to make is if you took a poll amongt ANY poker player and told them you can have AA against an underpair all-in preflop It's a poker players dream and the poll would show that problably every person would say that the player would be a quote unquote "Winning Player" while at the same time over the course of that players poker "lifetime" he literally got destroyed mortgaging his house, the car, selling his kids into slavery whatever.

Point is he would be considered a Winning style player but never have any profit to show because the law of probablity has not caught up with him yet.
And due to a finine #of years in someones life he will never show a profit.

So can it be said that even a winning player style or a winning player in the short term will in fact NEVER WIN. ??

Guys I'm not plato here and I was really really bored Iraq was quiet today in my region I was just wondering what you think call it really bored logic

[GeoffM]

Good theories Plato. Does the name Jamie Gould ring a bell? He probably wasn't anywhere near the top 5 or even 10 %ile of poker players in the World Series of Poker and he won it all. Poker is sometimes more than just odds & skill, but also luck. Underdogs win all the time (see David vs. Goliath).

[JDMcNugent7]

the whole thing is just a hypothetical and doesnt happen if ur properly bankrolled. winning players win and losing players lose over the long run if they play at a constant level that they are bankrolled for.

also, even tho u stated u know the odds, the example is useless cuz coinflips are 50/50 and AA to an underpair is 80/20. nowhere close.

[Talking Poker]

Gov - your concept of the "long run" is off. While a TRUE long run may be millions and millions of hands/flips/whatever, the numbers will statistically work themselves out much, much faster than you are suggesting.

For example, with your million coinflip, no way will the numbers be 520k - 480k. That's 20k/1MM = 2% variance and it just won't be that high after 1 million flips. I forget all the fancy terms (Standard Deviation - ooohhhh) and formulas from my stats classes back in the day, but I'mn telling you, it won't be this far off.

And same goes for your AA vs underpair scenarios. After 10k tries, NO WAY will the AA only win 30% of them. It's impossible.

If you want to prove it, and since you have the time, start dealing! Deal out AA and pick a random underpair. Then shuffle the rest of the deck and deal it out. Then reshuffle and deal it out (no need to reshuffle the two pairs). Rinse and repeat and record your results. Do this 1 million times or so, and I'll guarantee that at no point in the million hands was there a stretch of 10,000 where the AA only won 3000 times.

You could of course use a computer program to do this much faster for you, but like you said, you've got a lot of time on your hands.

[Govman6767]

I don't think this was meant as a idea on the long run.

No one can say that would never happen because in reality, even though 99.99999 %against nothing could stop me from going into a casino and throwing Boxcars 300 times in a row
NOthing could stop the bank from winning 300 times in a row in baccarat
nothing could stop the roulette wheel from coming up green green 300 times in a row
do you get my point

NOW HYPOTHETICALLY this will NEVER EVER EVER HAPPEN odds are I will be dead you all will be dead your great grand children will be dead but mathmatically speaking it is possible.


Heh trust me I'm not defending ANYTHING in my post at all because I was out in the heat having a smoke when I said to myself " I wonder if I could prove that a winning STYLE player could be a LONG term LOSER"
and even though the odds would be astronomical against you never know maybe it could happen.

HEH HEH maybe i was trying to explain all the chat boxers out there that always declare "I'M THE GREATEST PLAYER IN THE WORLD, BUT I NEVER WIN"
syndrome heh heh