[Phil Van Sexton]

[ QUOTE ]
What do you mean by $EV?

There's actual $EV and there's $EV as estimated by some model.

If he means actual $EV then it's nonsense by definition, and I think a disturbing number of people seem confused about this.

...

Then there's $EV as estimated by some model, and the usual fave is ICM.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think giga's post would've been better understood if the Q3 hand never existed. Everyone thinks he's talking about when to make -EV plays, and comparing that hand to curtains' J4s hand and other hands that have nothing to do what he's trying to say.

eastbay is right. giga is trying to describe his model. I've been thinking of it as the Gigabet Block Model, or GBM.

I'll never completely understand his model, but I'm pretty sure this was the point of his post. He was trying to describe how to calculate EV using the GBM.

Much like ICM, the value of a chip is not constant in the GBM. In ICM, each chip is worth more to a shortstack than to a big stack. Chips lose value as your stack increases. Therefore, 50/50 coin flips are always -ICM.

In GBM, chips also change value, but in a less linear and more complex way. A coin flip could easily be +GBM if winning gets you another block, and losing doesn't cost you a block.

I would imagine that EV results for ICM and GBM are pretty close on most hands. However, giga is using the Q3 example as a hand where they are not. It doesn't matter why, just accept that this hand is worth more according to GBM.

I'm guessing that the Q3 hand is still -GBM, but the play is not nearly as negative as it appears to ICM and giga's opponents. He is advertising with a play that appears insane, but is really only marginally -GBM. He is getting a discount on this advertising. He is giving up EV, but nearly as much as his opponents think.

This is just 1 example of exploiting the spread between GBM and ICM. Most of us will never play a $1000 SnG, so the advertising aspect of the Q3 is not important.

What is important is that chips change value in different ways than the ICM uses. This is valuable to understand at any limit.

ilya's summary might cover some of what giga was trying to say, but I think its dangerous to try to simplify his ideas. Just look what happened with the "PVS" despite being a much simpler and less important concept.

If you think giga's point was: "you should take risks to get a big stack", you are really missing his point and are better off forgetting than he ever posted this.

Hopefully, giga will come back and answer the questions that eastbay posed in his response in the original thread. Until then, I will try not to guess what he means by a "block" or "line" and add to the confusion.