SDouble on Poker Stars

[MuckMuck]

I recently was in the 20+rebuy tourney on Pokerstars and this hand came up with Player SDouble one of the tourney leaderboard points players at PS. Blinds 300-600 SDouble has an avg stack T-10,500 and is UTG he min raises to 1200 (which he has been doing frequently while i was at the table and showing mediocre hands) there's a cold caller in mid position with about T-12,000, then to me on the button I move all in for T-11,000 with AQd hoping to pick up the pot there and then. SDouble calls instantly the other player folds and I am kicking myself thinking damn he's got a monster. To my surprise he flips over QJo and of course he flops JJ5 and it's all over for me except for utter shock that someone could make such a brutal call? Can anyone justify this call...I could accept it if it was a $1 or $2 tourney where you have players with no clue but this guy is supposedly good??? I just had to share this because I know there are a lot of players who despise SDouble.

Muck

[cferejohn]

Moral: Getting onto the tournament leaderboards has more to do with playing a lot of tournaments than being particularly skillful.

[M.B.E.]

You can get on the TLB by playing a lot of tournaments and playing a high-variance game. You need many top-3 finishes to do well on the TLB. You can't accomplish that by entering a lot of tournaments and playing weak-tight.

TLB points are keyed to the square root of the place of finish. When you finish first you get twice as many TLB points as the fourth-place finisher. (Three times as many as the ninth-place finisher, etc.)

[Johnsears]

SDouble is by no means a bad tournament player. There is a reason for this call that you don't know or understand.

[The Prince]

Yeah but playing weak-tight is a recipe for disaster anyway. And having a high variance strategy in tournaments is good IMO, because it gets you in the top 3 more often. If he's doing that and playing well, he might have a good ROI.

But I agree that the tournament leaderboards are too biased towards the number of tournaments you play vs the quality of your results.

I would pay more attention to them if they would do it like the batting average leaders in baseball. Where you would need to play a minimum number of tournaments to qualify and then compare your results by a point system. That way, if I have a better ROI (or points per tournament) but played 100 tournaments, yet you played 150 tournament with a much worse ROI, I would be ranked higher (if I played the minimum required). This would be much more exact.

I know there are some players in the top of the leaderboards that trully play atrocious but play in so many tournaments per week, that they score often. But if you ask them what their cash ROI is, I suspect many of them are not doing as well.

Then again I perfectly understand why the poker sites are counting the points this way, as it rewards the players playing the most. I just don't think you can base a player's expertise by his ranking on these leaderboards.

Take me for example, I do very well in tournaments. But when I sit down to play online, I might play one tournament at three different sites, so that I can start all of them at the same time. Plus I don't play in smallish entry fees tournaments. Playing like this will never get me into these leaderboards.

Nicolas Fradet (The Prince)
www.wptinsider.com (http://www.wptinsider.com)

[cferejohn]

[ QUOTE ]
SDouble is by no means a bad tournament player. There is a reason for this call that you don't know or understand.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry. No. Nobody gets a free pass just because he plays alot, even if he wins alot. If TJ Cloutier made this call, it would still be a bad call.

*Maybe* if SDouble had some reason to believe that his opponent was on a small or medium pair (and even then, he's not getting odds by a whole lot), but there is just no way to make such a read online.

I've played against SDouble quite a lot, and he will certainly make calls that seem to me to be right on the edge of +chip EV (and ones that seem over it like this one).

There is something to be said for this strategy, especially against observant opponents (who now are not going to want to push with medium pairs knowing that he will call with coinflip hands; Gus Hansen has a similar reputation).

However, I still think this was a bad call, unless *maybe* you have been watching your opponent push preflop constantly and you know that he may well have absolutely nothing (and there is no reason to believe this was the case here.

"There is a reason for this call that you don't know or understand" is a complete cop-out. The whole point of this board is to discuss questionable plays so that we can understand how other players think and how we should think about poker. If you are going to blow off a poster who came with a legitimate question, why don't you just go back to lurking.

[eMarkM]

You should see him in the $10 rebuy, all-in every hand. I understand the concept in theory, just ram in everytime and keep it up until you get the big stack for post-rebuy. Riverloser, another well respected Stars player, does the same thing. 20 rebuys or more, not uncommon with these guys, they'll keep it up until they have large stack.

In the meantime they're giving everyone around them big stacks. I like to be the other guy at their table being the beneficiary of calling their bets with big pocket pairs when they are doing the ultra-LAG thing.

[Johnsears]

What I said was perfectly legit. He may have had somewhere else to be, or maybe he just didn't want to play anymore. The guy's post seemed more like an attack on SDouble's skill than a question about why he made the play he did. Loosen up.

[cferejohn]

[ QUOTE ]
What I said was perfectly legit. He may have had somewhere else to be, or maybe he just didn't want to play anymore. The guy's post seemed more like an attack on SDouble's skill than a question about why he made the play he did. Loosen up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry if I misinterpreted what you said. It sounded like you were being very patronizing to the original poster. Obviously what you say re: Sdouble's reasons for playing the way he did may be true; we don't really know.

I've played against SDouble a number of times though, and have never been particularly impressed with his play. If this was the only time I'd seen him make a questionable move like this, I'd chalk it up to the cat jumping on the keyboard or a sudden and unrefusable call of nature, but I think the point that a high standing on the TLB shouldn't necessarily be equated with good play is a good one.

[Boris]

MuckMuck -

This Dirtrancher. welcome to the forums but please dont share your bad beat stories. If you're not careful you willl end up like Riverloser. Of course his call sucked. That is about all there is to it.

[MuckMuck]

Wasnt saying it as a Bad Beat story...if that were the case I have a million more worse then that to tell. I was bringing it up more along the lines of a discussion on tournament leader board points. I name SDouble because I dont believe he is a topnotch player from watching him play. A good player yes but I dont believe his ranking on PS is a good indication of his ability.

[MuckMuck]

Dirtrancher,
I dont know what you meant by the Riverloser comment but I'll defend him because he's an excellent player and I personally think he is a good guy. Sure he complains when he gets bad beat but who doesnt?

[cferejohn]

[ QUOTE ]
You should see him in the $10 rebuy, all-in every hand. I understand the concept in theory, just ram in everytime and keep it up until you get the big stack for post-rebuy. Riverloser, another well respected Stars player, does the same thing. 20 rebuys or more, not uncommon with these guys, they'll keep it up until they have large stack.

In the meantime they're giving everyone around them big stacks. I like to be the other guy at their table being the beneficiary of calling their bets with big pocket pairs when they are doing the ultra-LAG thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't imagine that this is possibly +EV behavior. Sure it means that you'll get to the money more often, but now you are making so many buy-ins that you may have to get to the final two tables just to make a profit.

[whiskeytown]

I have been fascinated with how many players (like Earlbry, Sdouble, Riverloser, Ramashiva) - who I have notes on as being as loose as a drunk sorority girl at homecoming end up on the TLB

no doubt the number of tourneys count more then the amount of wins.... - you can get 50 TLB for every 1-5 buck tourney you enter where you're 9 out of the money...that's an easy 500 there if you play well - and I know they're in a lot of tourneys

but usualy NL - I don't see them in Stud/Omaha very much...in any case, playing just to be on the TLB is a waste...I'd rather play the games I can play best and try to win some dough...I don't worry about topping it anymore...

[Boris]

I meant that riverloser complains alot. Too much. He also calls people idiots and says they are stupid. I give him lots and lots of crap about it. I can't help myself. everyone should shut up when they get a bad beat, IMO.

[MuckMuck]

I agree with you that you should never berate a player at the table. Sometimes frustration gets the best of you but I try not to berate other players unless I'm provoked. I on the other hand have no problem telling someone how lucky they got but then i say gg and dont waste my chips. Back to Riverloser though, I think he's toned it down from what I've seen. I saw him get 1 outed the other day and he didnt say a word until some railbird got on his case. But he's young like myself and will learn that calling people idiots etc. doesnt help you at all just makes you look stupid.

[Boris]

I had to learn my lesson becuase the lady I was living with would not put up with my whining and crying when I got a bad beat on the Internet. The funny thing is that in a way I kind of like it when poeple fly off the handle because it gives me an excuse to talk some poker smack.

[TheGrifter]

Was this before or after the rebuy period?

If before then it is clear why he did it, he was trying to load up the table. Basically, the reason these guys buy in 10+ times in the first hour is to load the table with chips and build an action image at the same time.

By doing so they are able to build huge stacks with no worry about busting out. The final table in a big rebuy tourney pays very well and since most players (in theory) are not as good as them at this buy in they can make it worthwhile to take a hit early on.

I believe the strategy works but I don't employ it, I've done well in rebuy tournies by buying in twice to double my stack and then playing tight as hell. Because of the nature of the players you get plenty of action when you hit a hand. Just watch out for those beats.

Grifter

[Greg (FossilMan)]

I've played with SDouble a couple of times. Basically, he's just another loose aggressive online player who has very little, if any, real talent.

Normally I wouldn't talk about somebody like this. However, he's been such an as-hole in the past on rgp and other public venues, I don't mind trashing him publicly.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

[neotope]

I don't see how many times you could bust and rebuy to load up the table before the software started moving people around to different tables. I thought tournaments were setup to spread out the chip leaders?

Note: I don't play many tournaments so I don't really know, this is more of an inquiry.

[Che]

neotope-

[ QUOTE ]
I don't see how many times you could bust and rebuy to load up the table before the software started moving people around to different tables. I thought tournaments were setup to spread out the chip leaders?

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't remember ever seeing a full table broken during a Stars tourney. From time to time, one player will be sucked away if another table drops to seven players but during the first hour of a big tourney another player usually replaces the player who was sucked away pretty quickly.

The only time someone using the "load up the table" strategy would be at risk is when someone busts and does not rebuy. If this action drops the total numbers of players in the tourney to a multiple of 9, then the table will break.

When the table does break, the software usually does a decent job of redistributing players so as to balance table chip counts (when I'm short, I end up next to a monster stack; when I'm high on the chip leader board, I usually end up as the table chip leader even if there had been another huge stack at my previous table).

In summary, I think balancing the tables is a secondary goal for the software. Shifting players with the least disruption is the primary goal so tables are usually not broken solely for the purpose of evenly distributing chips.

Anyone else see it differently?

Che

[Johnsears]

Come to think of it, I agree with you.

[mackthefork]

lol he says don't go over the top of me, else i'll commit suicide.

[MuckMuck]

One of the reasons I put up the post Greg. I've read his posts as well and find him to be an A$$hole.

[neotope]

Che thanks for the great response. As I said I do not play a lot of tourneys so I am not up on how they work. Thank you for clearing it up.