interested in seeing the actual benefits of position tailored play , where the late positions have the strategic edge, I examined a number of Poker Stars hand histories from late 2008. Comparing $0.25/$0.50 blind no limit to $3/$6 no limit games, the latter expected to show more intelligent play.
Starting at the bottom line: This real world Texas Hold’em history data reveals that the biggest winning table position in terms of the number of wins and moneys collected is, by a mile is the big blind. But the most important statistic, the Return On Investment is actually a loosing proposition for the Big Blind.
Percentage of wins or pots collected without shootout, by table position
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Texas Hold'em Poker
Add new tag, statistical curiosity
Texas Hold’em Experts offer various strategies for adjusting your play according to table position, unlike hand ranking which can be readily determined mathematically, position strategies are a bit more of a black art. I was curious to see just what effect position may have on your outcome. I extracted winner table position statistics from 270,000 hand histories. Only pot winner’s positions were noted, return on pot investment data was not available. Read more…
Texas Hold'em Poker
Add new tag, statistical curiosity
A number of on line odds calculators, as well as the starting hand exercise holsted here predict winning odds based strictly on mathematical ranking of card combinations. Curious to see how well real world hand choices coincide to the odd calculator recommendations, I generated a winning hand stats chart based on real game history data.
Utilizing game history data from about 1/4 million IRC “no robot holdem” hands played by a couple thousand players from 1988 to 2000, to create a chart comparably to statistically generated tables. Some issues:
- Winning and tied hands are combined here (it’s more work to separate ties)
- Some data skewing may result from the exclusion of foldout wins in which the hole cards aren’t revealed.
- The size of the sampled tables varied, probably more weak winners sneaked in from small tables.
Perhaps the most interest, but not surprising difference between the theoretical and real world hand choices, is the lower success of junk hands (those ranked below 36 of 169) of real world players (in Red). This no doubt is due to lousy hands being folded well before the river, while the calculated odds (in Blue) assume all hands are played to the end.
The complete comparison table is shown below Read more…
Texas Hold'em Poker
statistical curiosity
