conspiracy theory pt. 1

[riverboatking]

YES YES YES!!!
CONGRATULAIONS AARON.

[OPJayhawk]

I am a winning player on Party and have played there a ton since the beginning of the Year.

I have a degree in accounting and am a "numbers" guy myself.

I do think there is something to the number of bad beats that consistently happen at PP.

The question I asked myself for a long time was Why would they do it? I mean what difference does it make to the people behind PP who wins and who loses? I think the answer might be by having a "system" that rewards bad play it keeps the fish around longer and does not let the stronger players eat them up so quickly.

More players = more money for PP.

I have also noticed that after cashing out the number of Bad beats seems to be much greater.

I had placed in 6 straight $30 Party 3 table tourneys and decided to cash some out. I was a little leary about doing so but did it anyway. I went on to finish out of the money the next 10 straight tourneys. In those 10 loses it was horrible bad beat after bad beat after bad beat.

I am not kidding when I say I lost ten in row when on the high majority of those hands I was a heavy favorite. I dont play crap and I am almost always ahead when the chips go in.

What are the odds of losing 10 coin flips in a row? How about 10 75/25 shots in a row?

I play a trapping style of play and am willing to accept more risk than most so I take that into consideration, but it is also had to ignore the obvious, the number of bad beats just happens way more often than it should.

I know the sample above is tiny and I play a ton so I would certainly expect there to be some streaks that you run into but the 80/20 shots hit a hell of a lot more often than 20%.

Todays bad beat was a nice one I am on AA in the BB. I am up agaisnt someone in mid position with A8

Flop comes A 8 4 (At this point I am a 99.9% favorite) but I think we all know whats coming

Turn 8
River 8

Thanks alot Party Poker.

PacmanKS

[jwg152]

Not my quote, but I strongly believe in it. It is, "it's not how you handle the skill but how you handle the luck." Obviously, the OP has had some bad luck in MTTs. Who the hell has not? But when it starts to adversely affect your strategy, you have truly been beaten bad.

Two days ago, I had a nice chip lead in the party 100NL MTT with 18 left. I reraised a fat stacked late position player all-in with AA and got called with JJ after I had made a minimum raise from early position and he raised back one third of his stack. He flopped a set and I went from having a huge chip lead and assured big money to a below average stack and made peanuts... later in the day playing a 30 multi I made it to final table with a top three stack. I held 99 in the big blind and called a mimimum raise from a player in middle position. When 2-3-3 two of clubs hit the flop I checked the flop and the player raised the minimum. Having seen this player in action I was assured he had crap, and I sent him all in. He called having A (clubs) Q (spades) and when the turn and river brought clubs I was sent packing with a token of what I would've made with that pot. In the midnight 100NL (Yes, I played a lot of poker that day my girlfriend was out of town. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I have a nice stack in the middle of the tourney and I and three others are all-in, one with JJ, the other with AK, and myself with AA. What can I say, another dam J on the flop takes me out and deprives of a huge pot.

When T.J. Cloutier lost the WSOP on the river, he later stated, "that if you are going to play this game you better dam get used to that." I would advise the OP that if he can't handle the bad luck without altering his strategy or conjuring up vast plots then he should find another game where the outcome is always based purely on skill.

[mackthefork]

[ QUOTE ]
I have a degree in accounting and am a "numbers" guy myself.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
I do think there is something to the number of bad beats that consistently happen at PP.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
I have also noticed that after cashing out the number of Bad beats seems to be much greater.

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All these statements reinforce my views of people with accounting degrees, I am an accountant too, I am also a winning player on Party. I have noticed that my AA gets beat JJ about 20% of the time and my KK gets beat by AK about 30% of the time, whilst this is unpleasant it is also correct. What fun would a game be where the best hand won every time, it's a game of chance you know, and THERE IS NO CASH OUT CURSE.

Regards ML

[woodguy]

www.riveredagain.com

[AStrauss]

I can't believe that people here are actually feeding into the idea that the randomness of the cards at either PP or stars is not-so-random. I mean, first off, it would be incredibly illegal for the cards not to be entirely random, and secondly as hard as it might be to swallow, "these things happen." What I mean by that is this: In a 18 top, SNG on stars with around 300 hands played, I hit AA four times. Once it was twice in a row. So, you do the math. 221 to 1 to get it on a random hand. 4 times within 300 hands. not likely at all, but guess what? It can happen. I can flop a royal flush 10 times in a row. I can have 4 kings beat by a royal flush that also beats 4 aces. It happens, and although it's harder when money is on the line, you have to deal with it. Adjust your emotions, or stop playing all together.

[KuQuAT]

[ QUOTE ]
I think what you're experiencing is just the length of multi table tourneys. Even if you are a huge favorite when you go all in against somebody, in a multi table tourney, you are going to go all in so much that you're an underdog to win no matter what.

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Bingo.

Every time you go into a pot, you can be busted. OK, maybe you're the chip leader and can only be wantonly crippled, but unless you have a huge chip lead, it's much the same thing. And, unless you're somewhat lucky early on, you won't have a massive chip lead.

So, even if you play very well, you're facing at least 10-12 hands over the course of the tournament where you might have the best of it, but probably not by more than maybe 3-1. Guess what? (75%)^10 = 5.5%. That is, the BEST player in the tournament only has maybe a 5% shot at winning. And much of the other 95% of the time, that player is eliminated early on. For example, (75%)^5 = 24%. That is, three-fourths of the time, the best player is busted in the first half! And this doesn't even count any play disasters, like flopped underset or KK all-in vs. AA pre-flop.

How can you mitigate?

One alternative is to play tighter than a <insert your favorite metaphor here>, and that will work early on, but will get you to mid-game with a short stack and makes you a target for thieves (something that's quite horrible, especially mid-game).

Another alternative is to try to "read" players, but that's very difficult online.

Yet another alternative is to punish limpers early on. This is actually CONTRARY to the GAP principle, but you know what - when people are being very loose, GAP only applies to serious raises.

The problem is that if the limits are $10/20 and everyone has $1500, then it's quite a serious raise to get people out of your pot pre-flop. I mean, these loons will call a raise to $100 most of the time and there are several of 'em creating long pot odds, so you might have to make 6x (or so) raises. That's perilous if you run into a tricky limp-reraise. But, if you know your table, then maybe that's not solikely. At least it's less likely than raising 3-4x, getting called and having your AK hunted down by 64s.

A related tactic is (almost) never limp in. You can often play a hand backward by open-raising with, say, 87s. This must be done with care, of course, but can disguise your hand and makes the limp-hunters more scarce. But open-raising with AQo just doesn't seem to work for me, because my opponents aren't mindful of GAP, so they call and hunt me down (unless I over-open-raise, but doing that early is treacherous).

Lastly, you can try to join the fracas, again with care. Scatter a few chips on speculative hands, because you play better post-flop. You do, don't you?

OK, that's where my plan falls apart. My post-flop play stinks.