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[JediMethod]

Really curious on something here. Suppose I wanted to be able to identify players in my database that are buying in short and ratholing once their stack reached a certain amount. How easy would this be? How about also adding in a filter for only players playing at least x amount of tables ( assuming that I had all the hands - I don't, I'm just curious).

Is this an easy thing to do? I want to be able to prove that you could easily isolate professional ratholers from recreational players that do it on occasion.

[kraada]

This isn't a simple report to create, and it would require custom stats. I'd have to think about how to put this together; the grouping is going to be somewhat tricky since you want to show individual players but at the same time you need data grouped by session for them and you wouldn't want duplicate lines . . .

[JediMethod]

Thanks for your reply.

I guess I should have known it would not be an easy thing to do, but easy is kind of relative. I'm sure it would definitely be quite difficult for an amateur to get done. My question is more less hypothetical though.

So could you say for sure whether or not it is doable, and if yes, then as an estimate, how many hours would it take one skilled person to develop such a report?

[kraada]

I think it is theoretically possible - you could certainly put together a custom SQL query to get this data out, it's more a matter of how to do it in our stats/reports system. I'm not sure how long it would take to build as I'd have to work out exactly how to get around the issues myself before I could figure out how long it would take.

[JediMethod]

Ok fair enough. I'm not concerned with whether it's actually done using a custom report in PT4 or as an SQL query. Whatever way gets the answers.

So going the SQL query route, and let's assume we have all cash hands played at all limits on a poker site, is it possible to isolate players that buy-in short and rathole when their stack grows to xbb in a professional systematic sort of way from players who are more recreational ( play less tables and maybe sometimes rathole) or those who do buy-in short but do not rathole.

I'm trying to see this thing from the perspective of the poker site if you haven't already guessed.

[kraada]

The way I'd start attacking this problem is to write a query that checks their starting stack size (cash_hand_player_statistics.amt_before) at the start of their session (we can order by date_played). Average these out per player so you have an average starting stack size for each player. Get the number of sessions for each player (an easy sum()), and then look at the average maximum stack size you ever see them with. If they are ratholing they'll never let their stack get that big - so if they buy in at 20BB and the max you ever see them with is 41BB and they play a ton of sessions I'd flag them as a ratholing suspect (so to speak). (I suspect this will work a little better than averaging their final stack since a good chunk of time their final stack will be busted - you could also look at their average maximum stack size too; depending on how long their sessions tend to be that could be informative as well.)

[JediMethod]

Cool thanks.

Could you also use the number of tables they are playing simultaneously to further build a case that a player is ratholing? Like if they are playing 24 tables, double up on one table then sit out next bb and leave followed by opening another table session?

Is it possible to show that a table closed after reaching a certain stack size was replaced by another minimum buy-in? Again, we're assuming that we have all the data on all players and games.

[kraada]

That would make things considerably more complex - figuring out grouping by time on sessions requires post-processing of the SQL data. Again it's theoretically possible, but it's definitely not easy.