Arbitrary Stats

So I thought I'd come up with some arbitrary stats. Here they are... let me do some explaining.

The first column are the pocketfives.com leaders in South Africa. In other words, those who have accumulated the most points over the past year on the online interntational circuit.

www.pocketfives.com (see here)

The second column is my own column for the most successful table finalists of the top ten. In other words, who has the highest hit rate of making a final table of the field. As we all know, you get those guys who grind tournies, and those who play one single tourny at a time with utmost concentration. Although this stat is pretty useless, it does give us an indication of who you would most likely choose to back because they statistically have the highest chance of reaching a final table. This raises questions such as what type of poker do they play, TAG, LAG, etc? What can they share with us? The second column completely overlooks the size of the field, which is a problem too because we know the grinder will cash more, but will naturally make less final tables.

The last column is an indication out of the top ten, who have earned the most money on the international online circuit. Notice that whilst a player e.g. such as dockinso may occupy the second spot for most cash earned out of the top ten currently, he also is the 8th most likely of the list to reach a final table based on his current statistics. This raises the question of quality versus quantity.

Please note that there are many higher earners than the following ten above, such as pasopvirpot, who isn't ranked in the top ten currently, due to not having cashed in an online international tourny in 2010. This assumes he isn't playing internationally online at the moment obviously.

So what separates the top earners from the bottom earners? Someone like dockinso versus me. I am currently the lowest earner in list, yet the 3rd most likely to hit a final table. The point is, is that if we measure our success in $ reward, than mine are pitiful versus a player who ranks 2nd, yet is statistically (not shown above) two and half times less likely to reach a final table than I am.

Problem with the above stats is that they do not account for losses. So ultimately we only know someones final table hit ratio versus their number of cashes and not versus their number of tournies played. This will obviously make a huge difference and change everything. Similarly, there is a lot to be said about the $ amount of the buy-in into a particular tourny, yielding in much greater $ reward and points, etc. A player such as dockinso may comfortably buy-in for $250 or $530, whereas another player may only be comfortable with a max buy-in of $75.

So the question this beckons is how much emphasis do we place on a player 'getting lucky' and hitting that big score, versus the grinder who does not make the most final tables out of his number of cashes, but is slowly and consistently rising up the leaderboard.

Perhaps, these stats can help us determine who we would like to stake, or perhaps they are a complete waste of time.

I have sent pocketfives and email requesting them to increase their statistical data per player and i hope they take me seriously. This would be very encouraging to each and every poker player.

This didn't take me long to put together as you can see by the brief waffle. Hope I haven't wasted your time.

Thanks for listening!

Fin