On the Topic of M vs Effective M and relevance to SNGs...

[Nicholasp27]

in HOH2, he talks about M and effective M:

M=S/P where S = your stack and P = sum of blinds(and antes)

so if the blinds are 50/100 and your stack is 4000, then instead of saying you have 10xBB, you'd say M=4000/150=26.667

of course, that's at a 10-handed table

he says that if you are at a shorter table, just multiply by the percentage full, so if down to 4 people, you'd have 26.667 * .4 = 10.67 M


of course, that's 50/100 blinds

when blinds are 100/200, your m is 5.33
when blinds are 200/400, your m is 2.67


now, he says the red zone starts at M=5, so if you use effective M, then on the bubble in a SNG, your M is 5.33, dangerously close to the red zone, even though you have 1/2 the chips in the tournament!

someone with 1000 chips has an M of 1.3


my question is if it makes sense to use effective M instead of regular M, or a modified effective M in SNGs...

if you have 7500 chips with 4 left, but the blinds are 200/400, your effective M is 5, or right on red zone...but are you really in that much danger with 7500 chips and 4 left?


to stay out of the red zone on the bubble, you have to have the following chip stacks at the following level:

50/100: 1875
75/150: 2813
100/200: 3750
200/400: 7500
300/600: 11250

question 1: is this really reasonable or should we adjust this for sngs?

question 2: should we factor in the % of hands played on current level and then factor in future level blinds in the sngs since we know they change every 10 hands, not every so many minutes? would this maybe give us a more accurate formula for how long we can last and therefore how soon we should become how desperate and start pushing any 2, or any top 50% when first in pot, etc? cause if you are on hand 10 of a level, your M is going to drop by a significant amount the next hand and then more 10 hands later, etc

[Slim Pickens]

before I read your post... can we just call M the Harrington Modulus?

[Nicholasp27]

sure, although he credits the term M to someone else (i forget who now)

[Slim Pickens]

Well, from the numbers you've presented, it sounds like an adjustment is necessary. There are two factors unique to SNG poker that would seem to make this M=5 rule-of-thumb for the red zone too high for a SNG tournament.

1) The blind structure is, relative to any live tournament Harrington might ever play, insanely fast on a per hand basis.
2) You always have the option of beginning a new tournament immediately after busting, so there's no premium on the "opportunity" of remaining in the current tournament.

I've actually got a use for a quantity like the one Harrington gives if it could describe, in one number, a player's exact situation in a tournament independent of stack size, blind size, and the number of players at the table.

Anyway, my opinions...
Q1) This needs to be adjusted for SNG's.

Q2) It might be valuable to include the namber of hands before a player posts blinds and the number of hands remaining in a level (in some unknown ratio) in M. I like this idea and I want to think about it some more.

[bones]

[ QUOTE ]
question 1: is this really reasonable or should we adjust this for sngs?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not reasonable at all. DH's equations and strategy lines have very few applications to party sngs because he doesn't account for how few chips are on the table and how fast the blinds rise (as you noted).

[ QUOTE ]
question 2: should we factor in the % of hands played on current level and then factor in future level blinds in the sngs since we know they change every 10 hands, not every so many minutes? would this maybe give us a more accurate formula for how long we can last and therefore how soon we should become how desperate and start pushing any 2, or any top 50% when first in pot, etc? cause if you are on hand 10 of a level, your M is going to drop by a significant amount the next hand and then more 10 hands later, etc

[/ QUOTE ]

Eh..provided that it doesn't create a drastic drop in folding equity and all things being equal (who you're stealing from, chip position, etc) I'd rather steal on level x+1, as the blinds stolen will worth a much greater % of your stack.

I really dont like the HOH series for party sngs.

Btw, wb.

Edit to focus: There's obviously an adjustment to be made for your 2nd question, I"m just not sure I'd want to quantify it.

[The Yugoslavian]

If you're playing STTs you really shouldn't think in terms of M...you can...I guess.

Think in terms of stack/BB. Unless you have an STT where the antes start to become very significant or something.

Yugoslav

[trdi]

I was thinking about that, too. I decided to forget about effective M in SNGs and take just M, if I really want to think in M-way. Effective Ms would get really low in SNGs, while on other hand Qs would get high. I think that higher Q sort of neutralizes lower M. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[maddog2030]

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hink in terms of stack/BB. Unless you have an STT where the antes start to become very significant or something.

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Or on party when there's no small blind. I didn't think about this at first until ilya pointed it out to me, but it can make a lot of profitable pushes unprofitable.

It would be more correct if we used M since it can account for ante's and missing sb's and other anamolies. But since everyone's always used BB's around here, and its a little easier to think of it that way, BB notation has stuck and usually works for most cases.