zachvac
Legend
Silver Level
I don't think very many people understand the meaning of the term "random". I was reading through a recent thread on RNGs and people were talking about how full tilt's was random enough so that good players win and bad players lose, but that it should be more random. Their proof was they saw too many patterns.
First off, patterns are a human invention. A full house means nothing to a RNG, so the fact that the random numbers happened to correspond to a full house or quads or even a royal flush has nothing to do with the RNG, it has to do with how we've defined poker hands.
Definition of random (from intro HS stat teacher): an event that although is unpredictable in the short run, is predictable in the long run. The teacher who gave this definition then did an exercise, we made two 10x10 tables to fill with numbers. We first did our best to create the most "random" table we could. After this we used the RNG in our calculator to fill the other side with numbers. He proceeded to guess correctly which side was the calculator and which was ours 100% of the time. How'd he do it? He looked for patterns, and those were the random ones. We seem to think that random means no patterns, but in reality if there are no patterns, that is when you should be suspicious of an RNG.
If you play 20k hands without losing to an over set, that's when you should be suspicious. If you play 20k hands and HAVEN'T had both extremely good and extremely bad runs of cards, you should be suspicious. But the good thing is that the extremely bad and the extremely good cancel out, and a good player can profit in the long run, while the players who use logic like "well it already picked someone to win", are the ones who may suck out a few times, but in the long run end up putting in more than they take out.
So in conclusion, if you're going to talk about the term "random", at least understand the basic definition, it's very annoying to talk to people who supposedly play poker yet don't even understand the definition of random.
First off, patterns are a human invention. A full house means nothing to a RNG, so the fact that the random numbers happened to correspond to a full house or quads or even a royal flush has nothing to do with the RNG, it has to do with how we've defined poker hands.
Definition of random (from intro HS stat teacher): an event that although is unpredictable in the short run, is predictable in the long run. The teacher who gave this definition then did an exercise, we made two 10x10 tables to fill with numbers. We first did our best to create the most "random" table we could. After this we used the RNG in our calculator to fill the other side with numbers. He proceeded to guess correctly which side was the calculator and which was ours 100% of the time. How'd he do it? He looked for patterns, and those were the random ones. We seem to think that random means no patterns, but in reality if there are no patterns, that is when you should be suspicious of an RNG.
If you play 20k hands without losing to an over set, that's when you should be suspicious. If you play 20k hands and HAVEN'T had both extremely good and extremely bad runs of cards, you should be suspicious. But the good thing is that the extremely bad and the extremely good cancel out, and a good player can profit in the long run, while the players who use logic like "well it already picked someone to win", are the ones who may suck out a few times, but in the long run end up putting in more than they take out.
So in conclusion, if you're going to talk about the term "random", at least understand the basic definition, it's very annoying to talk to people who supposedly play poker yet don't even understand the definition of random.
