Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Time to fire the graphics guy?





So I'm watching the final table of the first event (Foxwoods) of the Professional Poker Tour. It's down to three-handed. The short stack, Ron Rose, is all-in. The two big stacks, John Juanda and Chris Bigler, have a small side pot, but employing a common tactic are just checking down the hand to maximize the chance that one of them will beat Rose, and they'll be down to one on one for the championship.

When I first started watching televised poker, it was the World Poker Tour. I was amazed at how fast Mike Sexton could figure out what cards would produce the winning hand for a player. Yeah, I know, a lot of their voiceover is done in the studio long after the original taping. But that's only for the portions for which they need access to the hole-card camera information. When there's an all-in situation and the cards are turned face-up on the table, for the most part what you hear is what Mike and Vince Van Patten say in real time. And Mike is just as fast at spitting out what cards will be winners and losers in that situation as when the dubbing is done later.

I'm less impressed now than I used to be, because I've gotten to the point that I'm essentially as fast as he is. This isn't because I'm some poker prodigy--it's just sheer repetition of thousands of hands and the subconscious development of pattern recognition. So now when I watch poker on TV, I try to see if I can count the outs and figure the percentages before they flash them on the screen. Hey, I'm easily amused, OK?

I had to hit the "pause" button when I saw the graphic above. (You can click on it for a larger version.) It wasn't registering with me how those numbers could be right. I spent a couple of minutes going through all of the possibilities, and it just didn't make sense to me.

I finally figured out what the problem was, and it is now left to the curious reader--see if you can spot the error. Hint: It is not a problem with the cards; they are correct as shown. Also, there have been no cards discarded that are unaccounted for, because the only three players left in the match are all being shown. But the graphics guy(s) made a simple mistake, which seems sort of obvious once you spot it.

Don't scroll down for the answer until you've given it some thought.











ANSWER:
They mixed up the numbers for Juanda and Rose. Rose can beat Bigler's flush with a full house if either of the two remaining queens or either of the two remaining 4s comes on the river. That's a bit under 10% probability, which they rounded up, but then assigned to the wrong player. Juanda is drawing dead, since the best hand he could possibly make, with another club on the river, would be a flush smaller than Bigler's.

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