So, I wanted to post what I've been working on for the past few months, just to see what people think.

I started out playing sit-n-goes on PS, and more recently FTP. And as many people have complained about, it seemed I was the victim of an unusual high number of bad beats. It seemed more than regular random dealing would allow, but obviously nobody is capable of determining this just with their mind. So I wrote a program. This program queries my PT database for all of my showdowns (I think roughly 3500 showdowns). Showdowns are good because you can calculate the expected win percentage for everyone involved at every step of the hand. I found some source code on the web for calculating expected win percentages (which matches PokerStove results exactly). Basically I was able to determine the percentage of bad beats and percentage of suckouts. The way I defined these was such that if the cards were truly random, I should see the same percentage of bad beats as percentage of suckouts. I could also calculate the 'severity' of the bad beats/suckouts. This means the odds that were overcome, as well as the chips won (or not won). Obviously, as far as odds, a 55/45 bad beat is not as bad as a 80/20. Same goes for chips won, a bad beat with a pot of 200 chips is not as bad as one with 20k chips in the pot.

Anyways, without going into any more details, the results were FTP has been screwing me, and PS was not as bad as I perceived it to be.

FTP:
614 showdowns considered
Bad beat percentage: 36.80%
Suckout percentage: 32.17%

Now, you may say, big deal its just a 4.63% difference. That's not a whole lot of showdowns, maybe I've just been unlucky. Well, I'm working on figuring out how unlikely that is (obviously the more hands considered, the less likely a big difference between those values). Maybe I will figure out a scenario of how good I would have to run to get those values even. I can tell you from what I've seen, that scenario will never happen. Anyways, as far as severity.

FTP:
614 showdowns considered
Bad beat average chips not won: 7363
Suckout average chips won: 5593

So, bad beats not only occur more often, but are more likely to occur with larger pots. And last,

FTP:
614 showdowns considered
Bad beat average odds: 15.4
Suckout average odds: 14.1

This basically measures the odds that were overcome for the bad beat/suckout. A larger value means more odds were overcome. Again, the bad beats were worse.

So bottom line, do I believe FTP is fair? I don't at this point, but I don't think I have enough data to prove anything. Which is part of the reason I posted this. If anyone would be interested in seeing their statistics, please post some sort of contact info (IM, email, etc). Of course you must have a PT database, and be willing to send it to me. I would then tell you how bad (or good) the cards have been to you.

Maybe at some point, if I keep working on this program, I may provide it on the internet. If millions (or billions) of hands were considered, and it showed almost everyone was unlucky, then either 1) my calculations are flawed or 2) some online sites are not playing with a full deck, so to speak.

Let me know what you think.

I think I should probably go check how fair all my coins are by tossing them twice...

lottery is +ev go go go ngaskin

Originally Posted by Del75

S
FTP:
614 showdowns considered

Originally Posted by ngaskin

I bought a 25 game lotto for tonight, so if I don't win does that mean the national lottery is rigged? Because my sample of 25 should guarantee I win?

Honestly, whatever logic that is doesn't make any sense to me.

I understand 614 hands isn't enough to prove anything, if you read my post more carefully that's what I said.

That's what I'm trying to figure out if I've just been unlucky, or if something else is going on. Really the numbers show I'm not just imagining the bad luck.

would you be posting here if you won 4% more showdowns than you should have?