Interpreting EV

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CrushingSouls

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So EV is still a new concept to me. What does it mean when you have a session where your EV is negative but you make a profit?

So in my last session I turned a profit of 12.85bb/100 but had EV of -7.34bb/100 over 660 hands.
There was one hand where I made a mistake and it cost me 100bb.

Is EV important to look at or should I just focus on the profit?
 
el_magiciann

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ALL correct Fknife but if i play great poker at MTT and then at the end i lose with my AA against drawer at the bubble you know that my EV is negative for this one tournament right??? Or imagine you won one big MTT and make huge profit and lost all the others MTT u played in with smaller buy ins your EV gonna be at + . So i am just wondering what u can say about this situation...
 
Akorps

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Need to focus on EV, need to have a positive EV, and also focus on Variance, namely use bankroll management principles to avoid "Risk of Ruin" :)
 
Fknife

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ALL correct Fknife but if i play great poker at MTT and then at the end i lose with my AA against drawer at the bubble you know that my EV is negative for this one tournament right??? Or imagine you won one big MTT and make huge profit and lost all the others MTT u played in with smaller buy ins your EV gonna be at + . So i am just wondering what u can say about this situation...

Well, first of all: EV comes from equity and it describes not a result of one hand but 'a result' of multiple and independent outcomes of THE SAME hand. As far as tournaments go, I know nothing about them so I can only guess now. If you view a tournament as a collection of hands, you can still talk about EV; if you lose with AA prefop your EV FOR THAT HAND is still positive but obviously you're out of a tournament while in a cash game you can always rebuy. So I think thats why there is a concept of ROI which is more 'accurate' in terms of MTTs/STTs because like you said: you can lose 10 MTTs in a row but finish 1st in a 11th MTT and make a huge profit despite those loses at the beginning.
 
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CrushingSouls

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Thanks for the replies. I'm finding EV difficult to completely understand the math but I know more than I did a few hours ago.
But the simplest way I could come up with of understanding EV is about winning the most in each hand or losing the least :/
 
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Fknife

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Thanks for the replies. I'm finding EV difficult to completely understand the math but I know more than I did a few hours ago.
But the simplest way I could come up with of understanding EV is about winning the most in each hand or losing the least :/

Too bad you deleted that last sentence because I started replying to it. EV tells you how much you expect to win/lose in a specific hand, if you put yourself in the same equity situation over and over again.

Another example of EV is a donk, who shoves every hand preflop. With what hand should you call him? Obviously with anything that wins more than 50% of the time against a random hand -> because its positive EV! What if he shows up with AA and stacks you? Nothing :) It was still a good call because his NAT ratio (nuts-to-air) is unbalanced (simply put he has more often trash, which you are ahead of at least more than 50% equity wise).
 
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ALL correct Fknife but if i play great poker at MTT and then at the end i lose with my AA against drawer at the bubble you know that my EV is negative for this one tournament right??? Or imagine you won one big MTT and make huge profit and lost all the others MTT u played in with smaller buy ins your EV gonna be at + . So i am just wondering what u can say about this situation...


I was learning how to calculate EV recently for a live MTT hand, and wondered how useful it is in the context of a tournament. Found this article:

The Fallacy of Expected Value in Tournaments

I think maybe for high-volume online tournament grinders, calculating\estimating EV in tournament hands may be more useful, but I like the author's suggestions on Risk Assessment for live high buyin tourneys. I mean you can push small edges in a live tourney until you bust out and call it "playing to win", but from a risk\reward standpoint it makes more sense to do that across a high volume of low buyin tournaments online.
 
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Read the article above and changing post.

I agree with the article 100%. Not sure if a high volume of low buyin tournaments will change the situation enough to make using EV valid though. It should be something that can be simulated though.
 
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Henry Minute

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So EV is still a new concept to me. What does it mean when you have a session where your EV is negative but you make a profit?

So in my last session I turned a profit of 12.85bb/100 but had EV of -7.34bb/100 over 660 hands.
There was one hand where I made a mistake and it cost me 100bb.

Is EV important to look at or should I just focus on the profit?
This is a very interesting thread.

Similar to yourself, a few nights ago, I won a CC freeroll and yet when I went over my HH I only had one hand where I had +EV and even then it was a very small positive value.

The article linked to by rifflemao (The Fallacy of Expected Value in Tournaments) puts this in context to some extent.

Lake many of the mathematical concepts in poker EV is too complicated, for me at least, to calculate during a game even using an odds calculator as I have yet to find one that I can operate quickly enough in the time allowed.
 
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Thanks guys this is great stuff. I've figured out one thing probably causing low EV and it was my hero calls. Just ended a session and although I still made some dumb moves near the end of my session due to lack of concentration, my EV was above my bb/100 so Im guessing that is a good thing.

Any more notable articles or content you find post it up great stuff :)
 
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So EV is still a new concept to me. What does it mean when you have a session where your EV is negative but you make a profit?

So in my last session I turned a profit of 12.85bb/100 but had EV of -7.34bb/100 over 660 hands.
There was one hand where I made a mistake and it cost me 100bb.

Is EV important to look at or should I just focus on the profit?

you should focus at ev because if you keep doing -ev plays you will lose money in the long term , atm you are just lucky.

Its rarely correct to make -ev plays.
 
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essentially you are getting lucky, i think you should definitely look at ev to make sure you are making as many correct decisions as possible. If over a large sample size your ev adjusted winnings are way below you're total winnings you most likely have some leaks that you need to fill in
 
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Just had another session where I turned a profit and have -EV. Bit frustrating because will probably get killed in the long run if this keeps happening. Also is it common for a great player when running bad to have negative profit but positive EV if they play to their best of their ability? Or do negative profit and negative EV usually go together even if you are playing decent
 
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thatgreekdude

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Just had another session where I turned a profit and have -EV. Bit frustrating because will probably get killed in the long run if this keeps happening. Also is it common for a great player when running bad to have negative profit but positive EV if they play to their best of their ability? Or do negative profit and negative EV usually go together even if you are playing decent

i've had 2 losing sessions within the last 2days but i'm showing ev+ on profit, just a lot of run bad and hope it's going to even out in the long haul. They usually do go together over a large sample of hands you'll see they start to get closer if you're making good decisions and playing good.
 
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i've had 2 losing sessions within the last 2days but i'm showing ev+ on profit, just a lot of run bad and hope it's going to even out in the long haul. They usually do go together over a large sample of hands you'll see they start to get closer if you're making good decisions and playing good.

I think everyone has these sessions at one time or another.

As you play more hands, mathematically in the long run your results will level to the point where your -EV plays end up costing you more than what you take in.
 
Rain92

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Hey guys is there a good EV calculator that you can recommend me to improve my game. Does it help to use them for micro stakes?
 
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