The top ten test

As you know, I like thinking up statistical formulas and applying them to my personal poker data. I then try to figure out which values are indicative of poker success and which of failure. The most prominent example of this is the golden ratio; I firmly believe that if a player can win at least twice as many sessions as he loses, he'll be extremely successful.

For a change, instead of introducing a new statistic in this blog post, I'll introduce what I believe is my first meta-statistic. I call it the top ten test. Briefly described, it's that you'll know you've had an eventful session when the value produced by one of the statistical formulas when applied to the session data is in the top ten values for that statistic when applied to the session data for all the sessions of your poker career. You may have noticed I said eventful, not successful; some formulas measure failure instead of success.

I'll expand on the definition a bit. You'll know you've had an eventful last n sessions when the value produced by one of the statistical formulas when applied to the data of the last n sessions is in the top ten values for that statistic when applied to the session data for all of the contiguous groupings of n sessions in your poker career.

This will become much clearer with an example. Last night was my fourth winning session in a row. I calculated where the aggregate delta for those four sessions stacked up in the ordered list of aggregate deltas for all the contiguous groupings of four sessions in my career. Surprise, surprise: it fell within the top ten:

230200 Thu Aug 18 01:00:00 2011 Thu Aug 25 01:00:00 2011
228882 Thu Oct 20 01:00:00 2011 Mon Oct 24 01:00:00 2011
226726 Sat Jul 10 01:00:00 2010 Thu Jul 15 01:00:00 2010
226276 Tue Jul 13 01:00:00 2010 Fri Jul 16 01:00:00 2010
218476 Fri Apr 15 01:00:00 2011 Wed Apr 20 01:00:00 2011
216876 Wed Apr 27 01:00:00 2011 Sat Apr 30 01:00:00 2011
210000 Fri Aug 19 01:00:00 2011 Fri Aug 26 01:00:00 2011
208006 Fri Apr 29 01:00:00 2011 Tue May 03 01:00:00 2011
207675 Thu May 05 01:00:00 2011 Tue May 10 01:00:00 2011
206885 Sat Jan 07 00:00:00 2012 Wed Jan 11 00:00:00 2012

By the definition of my new meta-statistic, that means my last four sessions, taken as a group, were eventful; not only that, they were successful :-)

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 43 hands and saw flop:
- 3 out of 6 times while in big blind (50%)
- 4 out of 6 times while in small blind (66%)
- 16 out of 31 times in other positions (51%)
- a total of 23 out of 43 (53%)
Pots won at showdown - 2 of 4 (50%)
Pots won without showdown - 3

delta: $60,300
balance: $3,353,204