Poker probability question

**TheLock** · 08-15-09, 11:51 PM

How is there any way possible to determine that your opponent is "exact same skilled" as you are?

**head_strong** · 08-16-09, 12:31 AM

It's poker anything can happen, if you are playing this tournament online and have 75% of the chips you are 2-1 dog.....

**roasthawg** · 08-16-09, 12:40 AM

I would think you need more information... such as bet limits, player betting tendencies, etc.

**MonkeyF0cker** · 08-16-09, 01:21 AM

The only way to really put a number on that would be to create a sim. There are a lot of variables that need to be accounted for such as player tendencies, blinds & antes, stack sizes, etc. (as roasthawg alluded to). It's probably not worth the effort to calculate, but if I had to guess, I'd say 4:1 (80%) or better at average skill level with the short stack at about 10-15 times the blinds and antes.

**Justin7** · 08-16-09, 10:41 AM

If it is no-limit, and limits are small relative to chip size, 75% is correct.

If you're looking to settle in the final 2, the fair settlement is to take the DIFFERENCE between first and second - and give 75% of that to the leader. I.e. if payouts for 1 and 2 were $500 and $300, both players are guaranteed at least $300 with $200 at stake. 1st should get $450, 2d should get $350.

**20Four7** · 08-16-09, 11:40 AM

Originally posted by Igetp2s

If you are playing a heads-up tournament against someone exactly as skilled as you are, and you have 75% of the total chips in your stack, is your chance of ultimately winning the tournament 75%? Or is it more or less than that? Not sure how to go about calculating this if it isn't 75%.

Thanks for your help.

In poker the skill difference doesn't have to be a lot for you to gain an edge. But yes if your both equally skilled and have 3/4 of the chips you should win approximately 3/4 of the time. That doesn't mean you can't lose 3 in a row in this situation as this is a long term propect that will have variance due to the cards etc.

**Igetp2s** · 08-16-09, 11:03 PM

Originally posted by Justin7

If it is no-limit, and limits are small relative to chip size, 75% is correct.

If you're looking to settle in the final 2, the fair settlement is to take the DIFFERENCE between first and second - and give 75% of that to the leader. I.e. if payouts for 1 and 2 were $500 and $300, both players are guaranteed at least $300 with $200 at stake. 1st should get $450, 2d should get $350.

I should have specified that I was talking about NL, and that the small stack has a comfortable cushion above the blinds, so there's no real urgency to push with weaker cards. I wasn't raising this question to determine settlements really, I was raising it to evaluate tournament performance.

Basically, i wanted to see if my heads up skills are above or below my expected win % based on the chip count when I am 1 of the final 2 in a tournament. Obviously you need a lot of results to do meaningful analysis, but just want to know if my method of calculating expected win % is reasonable.

**Pokerjoe** · 08-16-09, 11:05 PM

Originally posted by Justin7

If it is no-limit, and limits are small relative to chip size, 75% is correct.

If you're looking to settle in the final 2, the fair settlement is to take the DIFFERENCE between first and second - and give 75% of that to the leader. I.e. if payouts for 1 and 2 were $500 and $300, both players are guaranteed at least $300 with $200 at stake. 1st should get $450, 2d should get $350.

I think there may be some disproportionate value to chips as your stack reduces, though. For example, if you are down to your last chips, 2 chips probably isn't quite 2x the value of 1 chip, and so on.

But last I heard, the tourney guys were calculating things the way Justin outlines above, so the difference may be negligible.

**MonkeyF0cker** · 08-17-09, 12:11 AM

Again, it depends. If you look at from a coinflip situation, the short stack is facing 7:1 odds to win 3 all-in coinflips and subsequently the tournament. The stack size, blinds/antes, and aggression level of the players are huge factors. It's certainly not a blanket percentage.

**MonkeyF0cker** · 08-17-09, 12:15 AM

For chopping purposes, yeah, that's pretty standard but I'm not sure that was the intent of the thread.