Prob (Victory) --Top Tourni Players

[wins_pot]

For purposes of discussion, let's say we are dealing with a $2000 buy-in NL HE tourni at the WSOP with 300 players. The average player has a 1/300 chance of winning. What chance does someone like Daniel Negreanu have of winning? My intuition is that his chance is around 10/300. I would say that if the average player has a 1/n chance of winning, then a top 10 tournament player is 3/n or 4/n, and a solid amateur (who has played in,say, twenty live tournaments, and plays 20-hrs of internet poker weekly) has a .5/n or .75/n chance. Comments....

[daveymck]

I would crosspost this to the probability forum you may get better answers there.

[housenuts]

[ QUOTE ]
For purposes of discussion, let's say we are dealing with a $2000 buy-in NL HE tourni at the WSOP with 300 players. The average player has a 1/300 chance of winning. What chance does someone like Daniel Negreanu have of winning? My intuition is that his chance is around 10/300. I would say that if the average player has a 1/n chance of winning, then a top 10 tournament player is 3/n or 4/n, and a solid amateur (who has played in,say, twenty live tournaments, and plays 20-hrs of internet poker weekly) has a .5/n or .75/n chance. Comments....

[/ QUOTE ]


how can an average player have a 1/n chance of winning, but a solid amateur who plays live tournaments and 20 hours weekly online has a .5/n chance of winning?

isn't a solid amateur better than the average player?

[wins_pot]

No.
In big $ tournies, the avg player is pretty damn good.
Needless to say, all of the x/n's need to sum to 1, so if someone like negreanu has a 10/300 chance of winning (in a 300 person tourni) and there are other player's of negreanu's caliber, then some good players will have less than a 1/300 chance. Even the worst player has some shot. Ted Lawson misread his hand and still won the 2004 WSOP Omaha Championships.

[Rushmore]

[ QUOTE ]
No.
In big $ tournies, the avg player is pretty damn good.
Needless to say, all of the x/n's need to sum to 1, so if someone like negreanu has a 10/300 chance of winning (in a 300 person tourni) and there are other player's of negreanu's caliber, then some good players will have less than a 1/300 chance. Even the worst player has some shot. Ted Lawson misread his hand and still won the 2004 WSOP Omaha Championships.

[/ QUOTE ]

The average player at the big money tourneys is getting worse and worse, which is good. Online satellites, of course.

As for Ted Lawson, he haunts me. I feel like Catherine to his Heathcliffe. I call out "Full house--fives full!" and he calls back to me across the poker moors "I have the straight."

And the moonlight catches his bracelet, and mocks me.

What was I saying?

Oh, yeah. Damn, that guy WON a poker tournament??!

[housenuts]

i figured a solid online amateur would be better than your average rich fish player who buys into the tournament because $5,000 or $10,000 is nothing to them

[Greg (FossilMan)]

There have never been that many "rich guys" who just buy right into these events. And the online qualifiers, even the ones who do very well online, often are very weak live players. They often give off tons of easily read tells, at least until they build up some live play experience. And they are so used to playing against really horrible players in the $10 rebuy NLH events online that they will call with hands that are hopelessly weak for a big live event.

Daniel's story about calling with Q4 on a board of 744 after the opponent goes all-in, asking the guy before he calls if he plays online, and then seeing the opponent turn over 99, is a very realistic story, and not at all a longshot. The thing is, there's a very good chance that the guy with 99 didn't even realize he was bluffing. He quite likely thought Daniel was more likely to have 7x than 4x in his hand. He might even have thought this would be the case, IF DANIEL CALLED.

This post is not meant as a slam on online players. It is quite simply that players who have learned all their poker online are used to a game that is very different than what they run into in a big live event. As such, their "read" of their average opponent is way off until they adjust. And, of course, until you get enough experience, it's hard to learn to not give off tells and be easy to read. When you learn on the computer, you're used to grinning when you get dealt AA, and doing victory dances when you flop the nuts. It's hard to stop reacting to those things live until you build up some experience.

Of course, I've run into some players whose experience is almost all online, and they're very tough tournament players almost from the first minute in a live event.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

[mcteecho]

You haven't been given the kudos you deserve for this post.

[sfwusc]

That would be my major worry playing in a big event like that.

I can play the game, but can I allow myself to be paid off?

SWUSC