Hi Thought it was about time I started keeping records of my games. I did see a post, possibly in the archive, that outlined what information should be kept for each game/tourney played but I can't seem to find it now. Can anybody enlighten me? Also do you keep records of other players? Cheers Reachy
Records As a minimum for elimination tables record the date, casino, win/loss, number of players, and number of winners. This information allows you to calculate a mathematical weighted factor (rating, if you will) for the strength of your play. You can also analyze trends. The factor is calculated as follows: (your # of losses/# of tables)/(total # losers/total # players) If your play is stronger than average your factor is <1.00 and the stronger your play the lower the factor goes. You can use this formula if you record your play using Excel. You should record if your table was accumulation format, and if it was a final table with a paydown. You can record other information as you see fit, such as rules, how you felt that day, etc.
Thanks Monkeysystem I think it might have been your post that I read initially. When you say # of tables in your formula what do you mean? The number of tables you played in the event or the total number of tables in the whole event? Incidentally where does the name Monkeysystem come from? I considered Monkeymind for me so I just curious. Cheers Reachy
records kept Reachy - Records I keep - as a novice small tournament player - are - each tournament entered, how I finished if I made final table - how much won and what total prize pool was - also track number of tables played and how many I finished first and second - also all expenses connected with play - entry fees, rebuys, tips, travel, etc. - everything - this allows me to track things like % of tournaments to final table, % won, second, etc - also net profit and return on investment - also % of prize pools won when made final table - but maybe most important - tracking firsts and seconds and all this lets me look at a tournament format (how many rounds, how many advance) and estimate my chances of getting to the final table - based on my past performance - and if I get there - what % of the money I can expect to win - I am not concerned about how many players in a tournament - if I need to win two tables to get to the final table - I still have to beat six other players at each table - in smaller tournaments more players does not necessarily mean better players given that "random odds" with 7 players per table are 1 out of seven to win ('average player performance') and same to finish second - cummulative results bettrer than that % say you are doing better than average for the level of tournaments you are playing - also - I am currently breaking down my past performance by tracking total history - versus more recent performance - this lets me track level of improvement in my play -
Records # of tables is the total number of elimination rounds you've ever played. All four figures in the formula are for your entire history, or for any time frame you want to analyze. So, the total number of players is added together from all the tables you played on. The total number of losers is added together the same way. The weighted factor tells how often you've been losing as a percentage of how often an average player would be expected to lose. If your weighted factor is 0.8, you've been losing 80% as often as a theoretical average player. Monkeysystem is the level of sophistication of my tournament blackjack "system." :laugh:
Can you explain please? Sorry monkeysystem, I'm trying to nail your rating formula and I'm not sure I've got it right yet. Please excuse my ignorance! Does "your # losses" correspond to when you don't make it into the money or the number of tables lost. For example you could play 4 tables in a tourney, lose the first, rebuy, then win the next 3 - is that counted a 1 win or is it 3 wins and 1 loss? (I'm guessing the former but I just want to check) Thanks in advance Reachy
Records Your example would be four tables and one loss to add to your all time totals. If each table had five players with two advancing you would have twelve losers and twenty players to add to your all time totals. If this were the only tournament you ever played in you'd plug these numbers into the formula as follows: (1/4)/(12/20) = 0.42. If you play a second tournament with one winner of six on each table, lose twice, and don't advance your totals would now be (3/6)/(22/32) = 0.73. You added two losses to your previous one, two tables to your previous four, ten losers to your previous twelve, and twelve players to your previous twenty. The formula is designed to give your probability of losing a single table, not a whole tournament. Using historical loss rates yields more accurate results when you apply it to other analyses than if you use historical win rates.
MonkeySys, how about this small addition to your formula... Use the reciprocal of your failure rating, to again produce numbers where bigger is better. A failure rating of 0.80 becomes 1/0.80 = 1.25 I think most people are confused by smaller numbers being better, outside of golf at least. I know, I know... This formula stuff is confusing enough that only the real diehards care anyway.
Reciprocal I agree, using the reciprocal of the failure rate is easier for analyzing trends in your play. It's hard to visualize a downward trend as being an improvement. If you want to calculate your probability of winning a table or a tournament, however, the reciprocal won't work. You have to use an additive inverse such as 1 - (0.8 * 5/7) to calculate your probability of winning a 2/7 table.
Just when I thought I was starting to understand... You have to say things like "additive inverse" and "reciprocal of failure rate". It doesn't take long for things to get complicated in blackjack, probably a reciprocal inverse square or exponential or something . Cheers Reachy
Better than averege per round Here is system I devised and I’ve been using for years now and being pretty happy with it. For every tournament round that you advanced give yourself points that are result of number of players at the table divided by number of places advancing to the next round. Divide your total score by total rounds you’ve played. That’s all. This method presents a rather good estimate of how much better you are than the average player per round. It helps to estimate expected value for different tournaments depending how many rounds they are scheduled for. For example, five players and two advancing, advancing entitles you to two and half points. For one advancing out of five players you would score five points. If you played total of twenty tournaments rounds, fifteen rounds where two advanced and you succeeded eight times, and five times where one out of five advanced and you succeeded twice, your total score would be: Eight times 2.5 plus two times 5 equals 30. Divided by twenty (rounds played) equals 1.5. That would mean that you represented 50% better result per round than the average player (which would be a very high score). If you have a tournament where there will be three rounds including final you could assume that you will have 1.5 better chance to advance into the second round, and almost the same advantage for advancing and playing in the final (there is a very small effect of elimination of weaker players), so your total value for such tournament would be about 3.3 bigger than for the average player. So, if the entry fee was $50 you would expect to win $165, minus entry fee $50, your net profit about $115. I recommend that you exclude final rounds from your stats, as there may be different goals for playing it, some players may go strictly for maximum $$ win and some can go for the prestige of winning, or placing high, or some mix of the above. A better way for the final round is to divide money you won by the average prize for all finalists. So if you finished second for $300 and prizes were $500, $300, $100, $60, and $40. Total money $1,000, five players, average $200, your $300 is worth 1.5 points. You can mix and match all formats. For heads-up, you have two players, one winner. Two divided by one makes two points for winning, zero for losing. One out of seven advancing would afford the winner (advancing player) seven points. The best players would get around 1.3 to 1.5 score. I don’t think you can get anything higher than that even with perfect play but without knowing exact ratio of remaining cards left in the deck. Anything over 100 rounds played should be rather representative of players’ skills. Hope it helps. PS Of course you may need other statistics, so jot down every round you played. I do it like this “2 oo 5 Y/N”, which means two advancing out of five players, yes/no advanced. For heads-up you may have two sets of data, whether you were first or last to bet on the last hand. S. Yama
c'mon Reachy!! what you're quoting, hypothetically, is a anfractuously systematic meiosis of the paraclete!! get with the program!! :joker:
