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A friend and I were playing some HU online. 5000 Chips and normal speed. While playing the topice arise: How many HU must be played to determine the better player? Of course we were only discussion without any evidens:

His guess: 300 games and nd the winning player must have won at least 10 games more

My guess: 10'000 games and the winning player must have won over 55% of the games otherwise it's just variance.

What do you think? Who is closer? (100% me :D ) any math wizzard who cangive a better answer...
 
This topic gets discussed frequently on 2+2. Some will argue that 50k or even 100k hands. Doug Polk and Daniel Negreanu just finished heads up challenge and they did 25k hands. Since two players that are as highly regarded as they are chose 25k hands I would say that is about the minimum number.
 
It sure isn't 300 where one player wins 10 more than the other. That would be as small a difference as 155 to 145. That doesn't mean squat. The real answer is that unless you have nothing else to do in your life you will never play enough matches to really nail it down. As an engineer I would guess that something along the lines of 10,000 would give you some idea.

But the number of matches is only half the discussion. Lets choose 10,000 for sake of discussion. So you play 10,000 HU but how many matches won would really indicate that one player was truly better than the other?
5001 to 4999 - clearly that means nothing
5200 to 4800 - so what
5500-4500 - now maybe we are leaning toward A being better than B

The point is that you probably have to have at least a 10% difference in ability to really matter in winning over another player to account for short term variance or cards.
 
It sure isn't 300 where one player wins 10 more than the other. That would be as small a difference as 155 to 145. That doesn't mean squat. The real answer is that unless you have nothing else to do in your life you will never play enough matches to really nail it down. As an engineer I would guess that something along the lines of 10,000 would give you some idea.

But the number of matches is only half the discussion. Lets choose 10,000 for sake of discussion. So you play 10,000 HU but how many matches won would really indicate that one player was truly better than the other?
5001 to 4999 - clearly that means nothing
5200 to 4800 - so what
5500-4500 - now maybe we are leaning toward A being better than B

The point is that you probably have to have at least a 10% difference in ability to really matter in winning over another player to account for short term variance or cards.

Thanks for your answer.
 
Tough question, heads up in a sit and go format is a whole other can of worms compared to 25 000 hands of cash. I'd imagine 300 matches is definitely too small of a sample, not sure thou interested to see what everyone else thinks.
 
Just to add one thing. Probably goes without saying but just to be absolutely clear. Irrespective of how many HU matches were played to determine who was better you must understand that you have only determined that player A is a better HU player than player B. NOT that player A is a better poker player than player B.
 
Just to add one thing. Probably goes without saying but just to be absolutely clear. Irrespective of how many HU matches were played to determine who was better you must understand that you have only determined that player A is a better HU player than player B. NOT that player A is a better poker player than player B..

100% agree. I know a few guys who mainly focus on HU cash, and they tend to be very leaky when it comes to ring games.
 

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