EV below zero.

Originally posted by StartlingGrope
In my mind the minimum equity possible is zero as you can only lose as much as your buy in.

That basically sums it all up. If you play a $5 tourney and lose, your profit is not $0, it's -$5. Equity works in a similar way. If a certain action causes you to make a long-term loss (in terms of money), it's considered have a negative $EV, rather than a $EV of zero.

That's what I initially thought but I'm struggling to get beyond a $EV below the buy in representing negative equity. If I play a $5 tournament and show $1 EV won then doesn't that represent an expected loss of $4 and it's impossible to get below $0 EV won? If we're also working on the principle that the negative figure represents a loss then that would also mean that any figure above zero would be an $EV win.

On top of this there are times when the $EV won goes beyond the buy in. One of my 'worst' EV results is a $15 S&G where my $EV won is -$17.60. That makes no sense at all to me - though I did somehow sneak into third place in that one so I don't mind too much.

Apologies if I'm being really stupid but I just can't get my head round it. I'm also running hugely above EV at the minute - and not for the first time - so I'm also wondering if there's some funny business going on in my HEM settings.

Originally posted by StartlingGrope
If I play a $5 tournament and show $1 EV won then doesn't that represent an expected loss of $4 and it's impossible to get below $0 EV won?

No, that would mean that you made a profit of $6 if you ignore the initial buy-in of $5. It doesn't really make sense to exclude the buy-in when you document your profits, though.
To give another example, if you win $22.50 for placing first in a $5 SNG, your overall profit would be $17.50 (prize - buy-in). If you lost, however, you would have a profit of -$5, as we discussed earlier.

So, yes, every figure above $0 does represent a win.

That being said, $EV doesn't really take actual winnings into account, but rather the average amount of money you are expected to win.
You can read more about the calculation of $EV in tournaments in these articles:

Chip Value (1): The Principle of Diminishing Chip Value
Chip Value (2): The Fundamentals of the Independent Chip Model (ICM)
Chip Value (3): Application of the ICM
Chip Value (4): The Risk Premium Concept

However, I still don't see how your $EV could drop beyond the buy-in level, as you described. Are you sure that you weren't multitabling or anything?

Thanks Harrier. I've been going back over my stats and I'm now convincing myself that something odd is going on. If, as you say, a positive $EV won represents profit then I'd currently be running at an EV of about 300% which would be nice but it's a bit unlikely.

That then presumably means that my initial assumptions are right and that $EV below my buy in represents an expected loss and anything above it is an expected win. In turn, I believe that this means my $EV should never drop below $0 if this is how it's being calculated. I can only think of three explanations.

1) The -$EV is somehow because all my chips were on the table on more than one occasion and I've sucked out at least twice. I'm not sure how this calculates though.

2) My HEM is set up incorrectly.

3) I'm an idiot.

If the answer is 2 then the correction would put my ROI EV at 20% at the bare minimum so that's pretty unlikely too. I think a combination of 1 and 3 is true here.

Originally posted by StartlingGrope
If, as you say, a positive $EV won represents profit then I'd currently be running at an EV of about 300% which would be nice but it's a bit unlikely.

Okay, now I'm completely confused. EV is not usually measured in percent.

Could you maybe post a screenshot of your stats so I see what you mean?

Sorry, I meant my expected ROI. I'll get a screenshot up at some point in the next day or so when I get the chance to sign up to an image hosting site.