TPFAP question

It is asserted in TPFAP that your results at the first level of a tournament are nearly inconsequential to your chances of winning. I am struggling with this concept and use the following example to show why this may not always be the case. I am not so much giving a contrary opinion as I am asking for some help with grasping the concept.


Suppose you call a bunch of limpers in MP with 87s on the first hand of a tournament. You have $1000 in chips, and the limit is 10/20. You flop a flush draw, and raise for a free card. Then, you call the turn, and have a busted hand when it's all over. This cost you $10 to see the flop, $20, on the flop, and $20 to see the river, a net loss of $50.


OK, fine. Lost $50. No big whoop? Let's further assume that the blinds go up every half hour, and that you run very cold for the next few hours. Say you see a few flops, post a few blinds, but don't drag a pot. When your stack is $350, and the big blind is $500, you pick up AA and double through. You then proceed to go on a nice rush, and double through 3 more times in the next hour, each time whacking off a part of a larger stack.


What has the $50 you lost on the first hand cost you at this point?


$50 on the first hand of tourney

$50 more the first time you doubled through

$100 the next time

$200 the third time

$400 the 4th time


For a total of $800. This is not an inconsequential amount anymore. As the tourney progresses, it could mean the difference between going all-in just before your blind with a hand like A9, or giving you the opportunity to blind off another round and move up a few spots.


In summary:

If you lose a few chips in the early round of a tournament, then run cold in the middle stages, each time you double through in later stages, the (dollar) value of the chips you lost increases exponentially. Is this not worth considering when playing hands in early rounds?

Basically, if you double through 4 times then yes, your "lost" $50 would have been worth 800. But 15 times out of 16 you will lose one of the "double up" hands, right ? Only 1 in 16 times you win them all. The other 15, losing the $50 cost nothing. So it evens up.


I know that you might not be even money for all the hands or you might still have some chips left after losing etc. but do you take my point ? It doesn't really help to talk about specific "what-if" cases. What David is saying that losing $50 in the first round costs you as close to 5% of your buyin as makes no difference, in EV terms. Similarly winning $150 for example gains 15%. Tournament factors don't really come into it when you have no chance of going broke or even significantly increasing or decreasing your stack in this hand, so you can play just like in a ring game (apart from factors such as deliberate image plays and adapting to your opponents' tournament play). Let me know if any of this doesn't make sense.


Andy.

Thanks, Andy. I agree with what you are saying, but I'll still raise these issues:


1) I assert that in the situation I described, I would double through more than 1 time in 16. Generally, if I isolate a (random) hand, my cards would be more than an even money proposition with that hand. Say I raise all-in with AQ in MP, and wind up isolating the big blind. Without seeing his cards, I'd say my chances are better than 50-50.


2) Does the concern I have possibly apply to situations where the blinds increase rapidly? Like in the mini-tournaments offered almost daily at some of the Mandalay properties where the blinds may go up every 20 minutes or so. As you well know, it is often quite possible to go an hour without recieving a playable hand. In a mini-tournament, blinds could go up 2 or 3 times before you even enter a pot. It may very well be that the first time you play after the first round, you may find yourself in a double-through situation. But in a larger tournament, where the blinds may increase every 90 minutes, 2 hours, or whatever, it is reasonable to think that you might play and win pots at all levels of the tournament, thus affording you a chance to recover some early losses.

Then look at it this way.


Let's assume that the hand where you lost T50 was a good hand to play. That is, in a ring game you'd make a profit long-term playing that hand under those circumstances. Thus, when you lose, you lose T50. When you win, maybe you win T150, but you lose more often than you win, for an average profit of only T10.


Well, if you've got 150 extra, when you double through over and over, you gain 150, then 300, then 600, etc.


If you're going to discuss what you lose later when you lose the T50 early, you've got to also consider the extra amounts you win when later when you also win early.


It all probably balances out to an extra profit equal to the T10 you "gained" by playing that early hand.


Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)