is there truth leaving while on a bad streak?

sactokid544 said:

Kind of true... Your past hands relatively affect your future hands.

In Statistics, a lot of our study is on dependent and independent variables.

So, consider two cases:

1) Take the probability that your next hand is AA, GIVEN your previous hand was AA, call it X.

2) The probability your next hand is AA, call it Y.

One can see that X<Y. So yes your previous hands DO affect future outcomes depending on the statistical analysis you are performing.

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bazerk said:

Um, you may want to run this by your Stat Professor again?

[If I'm understanding your example correctly] -- Being dealt A.A is independent of subsequently being dealt another A.A in the very next hand. Back-to-back A.A is cool though .

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sactokid544 said:

Excuse me? I have a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and Statistics.

Like I said above, each dealt hand is independent of one another. They become DEPENDENT on each other when we want to calculate the probability of getting AA consecutively.

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sactokid544 said:

sactokid544 said:

Each flip is independent IF that is the calculation you are trying to compute.

If you are trying to find the conditional probability that a coin lands on tails GIVEN that it's previous flip was tails, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to NOT consider the previous flip, to make that calculation. Thus the previous flips have a bearing when calculating conditional probability.

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I understand your point. The point I'm making is that using conditional probability to guide your actions in poker is a mistake.

Let's say the coin flipped 9 times in a row as tails (and let's make it a "fair" coin, no desire to get into rigged discussions). You'd be awfully tempted to think that this time it ought to come up heads, since 10 tails in a row would be statistically improbable. Let's say instead of taking even money for the flip, you're willing to bet w aggressive odds (i.e., worse than even money) that it'll come up heads because it came up tails 9 times in a row. This is a mistake - it is still exactly 50/50 whether it comes up heads or tails, you're making a bad bet.

When somebody thinks that a bad run of cards means they should stop playing cuz they're more likely to continue w bad cards, OR that since they've had a bad run they're "due" for a good run, and change their playing behavior as a result of either line of reasoning, they are making a mistake - potentially a costly one.

You'll see players get gunshy all the time when they lose flips several times in a row thinking that they're cursed by a bad luck run, or overly aggressive when they lose flips (or other situations where it was appropriate to put money in the pot, like drawing with the correct pot odds but missing) several times in a row thinking that they're due for the flips to come their way - both of these are responses that will cost them money relative to the correct plays.

bazerk, didn't get around to reading that paper, but thanks for posting!

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bazerk said:

^^Post #17 response was made to post #15 not to any subsequent posts (since they did not exist @ the time).



No offense was intended...I took Elementary Statistics for Business (lower division) & Statisical Analysis for Business (upper division) for the discipline I rec'd a degree in; both my professors had PhDs with one working as a Statician for the State of CA & the other authoring the book used in multiple colleges throughout the US (Statistics for Business and Economics -- Jim Lackritz) ...so I was pretty confident they knew what they were lecturing & testing on.

Anyhow, here's a paper by someone who has already calculated the occurrence of receiving A.A consecutive to having previously rec'd A.A (see pg 3 of 4). His creds are way better than mine (Dr. Brian Alspach, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics; PhD UC Santa Barbara) + he's a poker player whose creds are also way better than mine (he's @ least won a live tourney...I have yet to play in one ).

But I don't think froghump is interested in calculations...just asking if one should leave when on a bad streak since confidence is down (or leave because there's 'more chance of getting more bad cards').

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sactokid544 said:

I'm confused.. Were you just confirming what I said above with the paper? Or did you have another point.

He is just confirming my point:
Probability of getting dealt AA: 1/221.
Probability of getting dealt AA on next hand: 1/221.
Probability of getting dealt AA on next hand, GIVEN your previous hand was AA: 1/221 * 1/221 = (1/221) ^2.

Which was my whole point that the previous hands have a bearing on your probabilities, depending on which probability you are calculating.

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bazerk said:

You didn't mention anything about events being independent until post #18 AFTER my post #17.

As indicated in Dr Alspach's paper...there can be 3 different interpretations of the ??? 'What are the chances I'll be dealt back-to-back pocket Aces.'

From my perspective I see being dealt A.A consecutively as an:
Independent Event: The occurrence of one event has no effect on the probability of the occurrence of any other event.

Based on your posts (if I'm reading them correctly?), your perspective of being dealt A.A consecutively is based on:
Conditional probability: The probability of some event A, given the occurrence of some other event B.

The CC community has peeps with varied knowledge & expertise with a commonality interest in poker; for someone who may not have taken a Stat class, the direction of this thread might be confusing -- since the same data can be used for mulitple analyses with different outcomes.

Anyway, here's a more detailed version of this topic (I preferred the prior paper since it also addressed some other poker-related situations).

I really don't want to hijack froghump's thread any further as this is outside the scope of the OP.

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