Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Wrong probabilities on the World Series of Poker...

KnifeMissile · 11-01-2004, 01:35 PM

I was watching a final round of one of the World Series of Poker tournaments (I don't know which one, at the moment. I can come back later with that information...) and I couldn't help but notice that the displayed probabilies was egregiously incorrect. This was the hand:

<table border=1><tr><th>player</th><th>hand</th><th>to win</th></tr><tr><th>1</th><th>4&spades; 4&clubs;</th><th align=right>98%</th></tr><tr><th>2</th><th>K&spades; Q&spades;</th><th align=right>2%</th></tr></table>
flop

2&diams; 6&diams; 5&spades; 3&diams; ?

As you can see, player 1 has already made his straight, while player 2 currently has nothing. Now, the river card has yet to be revealed, hence the probabilites.
I was watching this game, thinking "man, 98% are pretty good odds! There's very little that player 2 could get to win..." and that's when it occured to me that that 2% was rather generous! In fact, there is no card that can allow player 2 to win. His chances of winning aren't 2%, they're 0%!

So, either there are roll-over rules in the WSOP that I'm unaware of or this is an error in the show.
I have a few questions concerning this. First, has anyone else seen blatant errors, such as this, on the show? Secondly, what could be the cause of this error? Surely, they use a computer program to determine these probabilities so perhaps there's a bug in their software?

Thanks for reading...

Oh, and I'm tempted to start a new thread on this subject but let me just congratulate Annie Duke on winning the WSOP Tournament of Champions! I believe she's the first woman to ever have won any of these tournaments...

11-01-2004, 01:35 PM	#1 (permalink)
KnifeMissile Location: Waterloo, Ontario	Wrong probabilities on the World Series of Poker... I was watching a final round of one of the World Series of Poker tournaments (I don't know which one, at the moment. I can come back later with that information...) and I couldn't help but notice that the displayed probabilies was egregiously incorrect. This was the hand: <table border=1><tr><th>player</th><th>hand</th><th>to win</th></tr><tr><th>1</th><th>4&spades; 4&clubs;</th><th align=right>98%</th></tr><tr><th>2</th><th>K&spades; Q&spades;</th><th align=right>2%</th></tr></table> flop 2&diams; 6&diams; 5&spades; 3&diams; ? As you can see, player 1 has already made his straight, while player 2 currently has nothing. Now, the river card has yet to be revealed, hence the probabilites. I was watching this game, thinking "man, 98% are pretty good odds! There's very little that player 2 could get to win..." and that's when it occured to me that that 2% was rather generous! In fact, there is no card that can allow player 2 to win. His chances of winning aren't 2%, they're 0%! So, either there are roll-over rules in the WSOP that I'm unaware of or this is an error in the show. I have a few questions concerning this. First, has anyone else seen blatant errors, such as this, on the show? Secondly, what could be the cause of this error? Surely, they use a computer program to determine these probabilities so perhaps there's a bug in their software? Thanks for reading... Oh, and I'm tempted to start a new thread on this subject but let me just congratulate Annie Duke on winning the WSOP Tournament of Champions! I believe she's the first woman to ever have won any of these tournaments...