Tracking my Variance - Is Andy right?

[M1ghtyDuck]

Diamondgeezer, the point is that once you've done a great many offers, the chance you will be significantly below or above the EV line reduces.

Say after ten offers the chance that you'll be over 50% away from the EV line is one in twenty. After 100 offers its just one in two hundred. After a thousand offers.. etc etc. Of course, one guy in 20,000 is going to be very far from the ev line by pure fluke, but it's the sort of chance that's negligable. (For me, as soon as a chance gets lower than the chance of dying tomorrow, it becomes totally negligable ).

But I agree with Andy this discussion has probably just about run its course. It'd still be interesting to see EV graphs from anyone who has them. Me I keep terrible records so nothing from me unfortunately! (I only keep the important record, overall profit!)

[Diamondgeezer]

1000 offers is not nearly a big enough sample size though. Ofcourse you would be fairly near to the EV line if they were all £100 BJ offers at 20 x b and you were playing £5 per hand.

But what many players are doing in actuality is a whole range of offers at different sizes over different games. And once you get into 4x d+b stickies and 100 x b offers then the variance greatly increases.

My EV graph is like a snake and I am constantly going under and over EV and this is true for all players I know.

If you have a conservative playing style and are risk adverse you will most likely run fairly close to EV. But when I had my bad year I was fairly conservative myself and I ran 66% under EV in that period.

These days there are a lot of offers but the fluctuation is much greater since the requirements are a lot tougher than four years ago. If you are doing big double ups relative to your bankroll then you will get a lot of fluctuation.

So what I am saying is your graph will be a reflection of your playing style and level of aggression. It will take a lot longer to perm to the average if you are very aggressive in your play. All our graphs will be different because we will be at different stages in our playing speed and bankrolls.

But as Advanta was hinting at - if you do £100K of offers and only return £50K should you really care that much? However it can feel pretty frustrating running badly under EV for a long period.

[Endre]

I have only done proper recording of profit vs. EV the last few months, but over the last ~320 bonuses I'm 51% above EV. So far in 2010, about 230 bonuses, I'm 82% above EV.

[zenmaster]

Lots of good debate of late while i have been busy elsewhere. Casino's took a back seat because the offers are so poor and i have been doubling my efforts on the betting side of things, hoping to do a few more offers in the next few weeks.

Added

Betfair casino offers i had 2 x 10 offers last month in download and instant and walked away with a very nice sum for small bonuses. +60

Betsson i did the day i got the email the day after they banned BJ to add insult i took a big loss on it. -44

[Sticky]

so what did the final graph look like?