A hypothetical What If question?

[Dentist]

You are in a multi-table tourney with 2000 average players.

The gods of poker grant you Pocket Aces EVERY SINGLE HAND.

Even better.... your opponents will retain NO memory of the hands the occur before and will only react to their present cards, present chip counts, and the present situation.

How would you play your hand, and would you actually have better than a 2/3 chance of winning the whole thing? That is not running into a set, massive draw that hits, etc, from a stack equal or greater than your that comes from another table.........

And if the players DID retain knowledge from hand to hand and you only became a "blind" stealer.... would you then be able to win the tourney easier/ more difficult?

[Cleveland Guy]

I think a little detail is still missing here

1. Is this occuring on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday?

2. Which planet is closest in line to Earth- Mars or Saturn?

3. Is a Will smith movie currently #1 in the box office?

4. What did everyone at the table have for lunch before the tournament started
3.

[SossMan]

I would play conservatively early in the tournament. When I say conservatively, I mean that I would not call an all in bet preflop. If I know I'm going to get AA every hand, then I will look for situations where I can steal and resteal from smaller stacks. I'm not going to get into any big confrontations on the flop without a set (and I would even consider folding top set on the flop if there was a draw out)
Basically, I'm never going to get into a confrontation with someone who can bust me. However, since I should be chip leader for most, if not all, of the tournament, I would gradually start increasing my aggressiveness as my stack gets proportionally bigger compared to my opponents.
For instance, if my stack was twice the size of everyone else at the table, then I would consider raising 4x every hand, calling all in's preflop, and going in on every flop.

I think I would stand a larger than 2/3 chance of winning...somewhere in the 90% range. You should easily be able to accumulate chips as long as you don't do anything really stupid early in the tournament. You should be going to the final table with a monsterous chip lead.
Another thing I would do is to prolong the bubble as long as I could. I would go out of my way to NOT bust the last couple of people on the bubble since that would be a very, very profitable situation for me.

If my opponents realized that i got AA every time, I would simply push every hand. Who is going to call me if they know I have AA?
Or do they just know that I've gotten AA 36 times in a row, but don't know that I have this deal with the poker gods, so they don't know for a fact that I will be getting it the 37th time? If that is the case, then I will be stealing blinds every hand with a 3x raise and probably folding to a reraise depending on the stack size. I still don't want to go all in preflop vs. someone w/ more than half my stack. Of course if they start figuring me out that I will go away if they reraise all in w/ a certain stack size, then I will have to bite the bullet and teach them a lesson. This increases the risk of me busting out, but it's the only way to preserve my blind stealing ways. In short, you win 100% of the hands in which you don't get called.

[BrettK]

[ QUOTE ]
How would you play your hand, and would you actually have better than a 2/3 chance of winning the whole thing?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think having a 2/3 chance of winning the tournament is out of the question.

Getting all of your chips in with the nuts seems like the most you can hope for in any situation, so let's assume that you push preflop every time. Additionally, let's assume that when you're called, you're called by one of the hands that are the biggest dogs against aces. This should represent the best possible scenario. Axo is the worst as a 9:1 underdog, right?

Number of calls/Chances of winning all of them
1/90%
2/81%
3/72.9%
4/65.6%
5/59.0%
6/53.1%
7/47.8%

Notice that you only have to be called four times to have less than a 2/3 chance of winning every time, and only seven times to drop below a 1/2 chance.

I understand that each time you double up, it will be less likely that you're up against a stack that has you covered the next time, but I'm just trying to prove that 2/3 is way too high.

Brett

[BrettK]

Hmm. Disregard my post please. Heh.

Brett

[Dentist]

This is a good reply and I agree that with your strategy you would win well over 90% of the time.

But isn't it amazing that you can get the pre-flop NUTS on every hand, yet still have to retain a fairly sound thinking strategy just to be able to win it?

[SossMan]

[ QUOTE ]
But isn't it amazing that you can get the pre-flop NUTS on every hand, yet still have to retain a fairly sound thinking strategy just to be able to win it?


[/ QUOTE ]

i know, it's funny.

Keep in mind that the only reason for the conservative play is because I *know* there will be plenty of ways to easily accumulate chips down the road.
This is often the reason that some wacko's who say they would fold preflop on hand 1 of a tournament w/ AA give for folding...but they are disregarding the fact that that they, most likely, will not get AA every hand of the tournament. Chances are against them, anyway.

[pete fabrizio]

It would be easier if they knew, because you would go all-in every hand and blind your way to victory.

You would still have a good chance if they didn't know, since as soon as you got a decent stack of chips there's no way they could ever overcome it - but you would still risk them calling you early on.

Your best strategy, I think, would be to go all-in basically every hand, while avoiding confrontations with other big stacks. While the e.v. of each hand is lower this way, by cutting down the variance, your chances of winning the tournament skyrocket overall.

I think either way your chances of winning the tournament are far higher than 66%. A more interesting question, I think, is how you would fare in the same tournament with complete knowledge of people's hands -- then you could play "perfect" poker, but how much would that get you?

[SossMan]

[ QUOTE ]
I think either way your chances of winning the tournament are far higher than 66%. A more interesting question, I think, is how you would fare in the same tournament with complete knowledge of people's hands -- then you could play "perfect" poker, but how much would that get you?


[/ QUOTE ]

This is a much easier example. I don't think any competant player could lose if they knew their opponents hands. I think I would win virtually every time.

[deacsoft]

[ QUOTE ]
3. Is a Will Smith movie currently #1 in the box office?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's funny. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Let's take the question a step further and say that you hit the nuts every hand. lol