Tuesday, March 31, 2009

100 million hands analyzed, none of them by me.

http://cigital.com/resources/gaming/poker/100M-Hand-AnalysisReport.pdf

100 million poker hands from 2008, December on pokerstars.

Summary result:

*Most hands (74%) are decided without the winner showing the precise cards he/she is playing. Thus the nature of the hands is irrelevant.
*In the remaining hands, >50% are won by a player who does not have the best possible hand among those dealt preflop.

Sumamry judgement impending:

*It is difficult to imagine that pure chance is the governing factor in the majority of hold em hand outcomes.


It is likely that a larger-scale study could define and quantify different types of skills in poker:

*table selection (playing in situations where the above numbers are skewed)
*Ability to manipulate frequency of showdowns.
*Ability to manipulate the expected value at showdown.

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