Harry: clarifying my penalty card estimations

[rockofjello333]

First, when I said ignoring penalty cards in JOB cost .05 of 1
percent, I meant .05 of 1 percent of the TOTAL EV. As in: reducing
the payout from 99.5% to 99.495%.

Without bothering to check (because I don't know how I'd check it,
for one thing, and another thing, whatever the figure is, it doesn't
change my basic point), I would also stand by my figures of an
approximate .2% loss in EV on Deuces Wild and 10/7 DB, simply
because penalty card hands come up so often in those games. But even
if it turns out to be closer to .1%, that would still be 2/3 of
your "advantage" with perfect DB play (100.15%) and a goodly potion
of your advantage at DW (100.7%).

BTW, in my .2% consideration of DW penalty card figure, I was
subtracting from the "super-optimal" 100.76% EV, which can be
attained through obeying arcane considerations such as only taking
certain straight draws when discarding a 3, J107 suited rules, blah
blah. The 100.7% figure is what you get when you consider penalty
cards, but don't play Bob Dancer-perfect.

If somebody wants to go through the math to figure out the exact
cost of not observing penalty cards in the various games, the actual
figures may be different from mine (and since I wrote that post at 3
AM, I'm not going to hold myself to a very high standard in that
regard :)), but I would bet that my basic premise is correct: using
penalty card rules is worth the trouble in DW and DB, and NOT worth
it in JOB.

And just a parenthetical note: if you agree with the basic premise
of a post, but feel the math is flawed, why bother to "correct" the
math if the "corrected" version will still support the premise?
That's Mr. Spock Syndrome ("Ninety-eight point seven five two six
four THREE light-years to destination, Captain), and on a par IMHO
with those who bother to correct spelling (thank God hardly anybody
does that here any more!). There are times when approximations are
good enough.

[Harry_Porter]

I'll offer up a mea culpa, rock. It should be clear that it's my
nature for my eyes to be drawn first to numbers and the message second
I did a real hiccup over your estimates of incremental ER when
penalties are ignored. But as you note, your general message was on
target and that's what was key.

That said, I still have sizable qualms with general aspects of both
your first post and the follow up, beyond just where approximations
are off by a factor of 10.

However, I've given Spock leave (some nonsense to do with "Pon farr")
so I'll leave it be. (You might check out Skip Hughes post, for what
it's worth

- Harry

rockofjello333 wrote:

···

First, when I said ignoring penalty cards in JOB cost .05 of 1
percent, I meant .05 of 1 percent of the TOTAL EV. As in: reducing
the payout from 99.5% to 99.495%.

Without bothering to check (because I don't know how I'd check it,
for one thing, and another thing, whatever the figure is, it doesn't
change my basic point), I would also stand by my figures of an
approximate .2% loss in EV on Deuces Wild and 10/7 DB, simply
because penalty card hands come up so often in those games. But even
if it turns out to be closer to .1%, that would still be 2/3 of
your "advantage" with perfect DB play (100.15%) and a goodly potion
of your advantage at DW (100.7%).

BTW, in my .2% consideration of DW penalty card figure, I was
subtracting from the "super-optimal" 100.76% EV, which can be
attained through obeying arcane considerations such as only taking
certain straight draws when discarding a 3, J107 suited rules, blah
blah. The 100.7% figure is what you get when you consider penalty
cards, but don't play Bob Dancer-perfect.

If somebody wants to go through the math to figure out the exact
cost of not observing penalty cards in the various games, the actual
figures may be different from mine (and since I wrote that post at 3
AM, I'm not going to hold myself to a very high standard in that
regard :)), but I would bet that my basic premise is correct: using
penalty card rules is worth the trouble in DW and DB, and NOT worth
it in JOB.

And just a parenthetical note: if you agree with the basic premise
of a post, but feel the math is flawed, why bother to "correct" the
math if the "corrected" version will still support the premise?
That's Mr. Spock Syndrome ("Ninety-eight point seven five two six
four THREE light-years to destination, Captain), and on a par IMHO
with those who bother to correct spelling (thank God hardly anybody
does that here any more!). There are times when approximations are
good enough.

[rockofjello333]

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Harry Porter" <harry.porter@v...>
wrote:

I'll offer up a mea culpa, rock. It should be clear that it's my
nature for my eyes to be drawn first to numbers and the message

second

Well, it's a known fact that 43.7 percent of all quoted statistics
are made up on the spot, and that 54.24563463281 percent of them are
inaccurate.
I was always one of those people who hated the abstractness of math,
and if I saw a scientific formula, I always wanted someone to
rephrase it into words. That tendency lingers as I have no love for
the figures themselves, only for their utility. This is why I
occasionally suffer from inaccuracy; I just don't give a damn
sometimes.

I did a real hiccup over your estimates of incremental ER when
penalties are ignored. But as you note, your general message was

on target and that's what was key.

I guess I react the same way when I see a phrase like "beef in IT'S
own gravy" or hear someone talk about "nucular" weapons. I couldn't
read Huck Finn as a child because I hated having to mentally
translate the cornpone dialogue. I realize that some people wouldn't
care, and would accuse me of being overly fussy.

Oh BTW, did you hear about the statistician who drowned in a lake
with an average depth of six inches?