Can any intelligent person who has the means win tournaments?

[Wayfare]

I was thinking about the number of wealthy tournament players out there who have not won their money from tournaments yet do well in them anyway -- Phil Gordon, Paul Phillips, and to a certain extent Toby MacGuire and Ben Affleck, and I wanted to ask:

If the money is insignificant to you and you are reasonably willing to learn some basic strategies, how hard is it really to win tournaments?

This also arises from me thinking about Sklansky's simple all-in system for tournaments and how he said that it's success really clues you in on how tournaments are really not that difficult. I would love to hear some commentary about this point from the more experienced.

Now I can see some "home grown" gamblers like Doyle and Scotty Ngyuen who make ridiculous amounts of money in cash games and tournaments, but if people are willing to put in the time and effort to "learn" how to play a tournament and have good natural reading skills, wouldn't it make perfect sense that they would be just as good as the "professionals?" Not to say that the professionals wouldn't be better in certain other situations (such as cash games), but aren't tournaments essentially far simplified because of the relative shallowness of the stacks?

For another example just look at "the crew;" does anyone really think that it is coincidence that these ten guys are just phenomenally better than everyone else, or do they simply put in the effort to teach each other what is essentially a simplistic strategy?

[sammysusar]

it is important to look at tournaments in a long term context.
sure any person who plays reasonably well can win one event but measuring results over a many year period is the only way to determine if a tournament player is truely skillful.

[Smoothcall]

Yes you are correct anybody can win a tournament with some basic tournamet knowledge. The top players will earn more in the long run. Look at Robert Varkonyi. No offense to him but besides getting and A for fearlessness was a rank amateur. Many of the famous faces you see on tv aren't necessarily great players either they just play alot of tournies either cause they have money or borrow from other tournament buddies until they can hit something. Some are good. Hard to weed them out unless your in the poker world yourself.

[JohnG]

[ QUOTE ]
If the money is insignificant to you and you are reasonably willing to learn some basic strategies, how hard is it really to win tournaments?

[/ QUOTE ]

Once you reach a certain basic level of knowledge that isn't difficult to reach, the hardest part in winning is getting lucky enough to do so. Put a number of these people in a tourney field, and one of them rates to get the luck to take them far.

[alittle]

Given enough money and enough monkeys...
http://www.fubarco.com/images/monkey.jpg

[gergery]

Cmon, you can’t really believe this. I think you’re oversimplifying quite a bit.

Tourney’s can be somewhat more simplistic in that you often have fewer streets to make decisions on, and there is often less to think about on the turn/river. But there are a number of other factors that ring games don’t have that generate complexity, such as stealing/defending blinds, managing stacks sizes, and adjusting for chip vs. $ EV.

If you thought of a tourney as 6 long days of short-stacked ring sessions stuck together, would you say that their was a simplistic strategy that could beat experts in that type of game? Maybe over 1 6-day session some average players could beat great players, but over the long run the better players will still win, although their advantage might be less due to the structure, and our memories might get fuzzy since there are so few big tourneys.

--Greg

[drewjustdrew]

1. I don't think he specifically mentioned a 6 day tournament.

2. I don't think he was talking about long term results. He was talking about winning one event.

[lastchance]

However, you must remember that preflop all in decisions are only a certain part of the game. The best players know and have to be able to make great reads, extract value and disquise their hand postflop. There is a lot more play when the blinds are still small, and that makes shortstack survival only a part of the game. However, I'm certain if we all learned shortstack survival, we could all do decently in tourneys, especially those geared toward this kind of strategy.

[HoldingFolding]

I think a chimp would do very well. Just teach it to push all the chips in every hand. After all who wants to be known as the player who lost at the WSOP to a primate.

[A_C_Slater]

[ QUOTE ]
I think a chimp would do very well. Just teach it to push all the chips in every hand. After all who wants to be known as the player who lost at the WSOP to a primate.

[/ QUOTE ]

Human beings are primates. Don't you know your Darwin?

[benfranklin]

[ QUOTE ]
For another example just look at "the crew;" does anyone really think that it is coincidence that these ten guys are just phenomenally better than everyone else, or do they simply put in the effort to teach each other what is essentially a simplistic strategy?

[/ QUOTE ]

"phenomenally" /images/graemlins/confused.gif /images/graemlins/confused.gif GAG!!!

Personalities aside, I would say that as a group they are above average. None has yet to show himself to be phenomenal. I also think that you are confusing cause and effect. They aren't a group of random people who got together and suddenly became good poker players. Rather, they hang out together because they are similar personalities and because they were better than average poker players to start with. Their total immersion in poker does lead to quicker than average improvement also.

But poker is not a team sport. With maturity, one or two of them may become really good. The rest will remain what they are: above average players in the general population of poker players, about average for pros who make their living at it.

As to the more general question: Can any intelligent person who has the means win tournaments? If you are talking about WPT or any WSOP bracelet, I think the answer is no. Yes, guys like Paul Phillilps and Phil Gordon are high level players. For every one like Paul Phillips who wins a WPT tournament, how many people try, really work at it, and become good but not great? No way to really know, but I'd bet there are a lot. Just like there are hundreds of good baseball players who can never hit a major league curve ball, no matter how much coaching and practice they have. They just don't have the talent.

My feeling, which is supported by everything I've read on the subject by people who should know, is that reading and playing and tutoring and discussing poker will take you only so far, and that is short of the upper levels. For that you need native talent. The talent is different for different people. Gus Hansen has talent that is strikingly different than that of Howard Lederer. But neither would be where they are today without talent, no matter how much they studied.

Not to beat a dead horse, but if any of the Crew have talent, it is masked by immaturity.

[Nick B.]

[ QUOTE ]
Scotty Ngyuen who make ridiculous amounts of money in cash games and tournaments

[/ QUOTE ]

Broke.


Intelligent person with the means. (http://www.brodietech.com/liontales/blog.htm)

[turnipmonster]

in cash games, we look at 10k hands as a relatively short, statistically meaningless interval. what do you guys think the long run for tournaments might look like? how long do you think it would take before we could really say anything about how good anyone is with any kind of confidence?

--turnipmonster

[PokerPaul]

scotty n is broke?? how do you know? doesnt he have like a family of 6 or something?

[J.R.]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say richard brodie is more than just "intelligent".

[J.R.]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say richard brodie is more than just "intelligent".