Paul Phillips WSOP Hand

[fnurt]

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Paul has an edge on the field and marginal chips are increasingly worth less.

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As was demonstrated by several strong players before (gigabet on this board, for instance), your last statement is highly debatable. Players who can handle big stack well, can definitely gain more than what the simple cEV calculation suggest, and might sometimes find that even -cEV spots are actually long term +$EV for them from the perspective of future table control and chips accumulation.

This is of course very different from the ideas presented in TPFAP, but this book is very far from suggesting an optimal MTT play, especially for LAGish, strong players.

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Didn't DS show this to be mathematically impossible some time ago?

Let's take a hypothetical strong player, and assign him cash equity of $X with his starting stack. If he doubles the starting stack, his cash equity becomes $Y. You are postulating a player who is so good at playing a big stack that Y > 2X. So far so good.

One other variable we need to discuss is the player's chance to double up before he busts. Rather than making any assumptions about this, we'll just call it Z.

There are two ways to represent the player's equity at the start of the tournament. One of them is simply X, as we defined it above. The other way is more complicated; he has Z chance of doubling his stack and achieving equity Y, and (1-Z) chance of busting first. So his overall equity is (Z * Y) + ((1-Z) * 0). In other words, X = Z * Y.

Above, we said that Y > 2X. Since X = ZY, then Y > 2ZY. Dividing both sides by Y, 1 > 2Z. Z is therefore less than 0.5.

What did we just prove? In plain English, we proved that the only player whose equity can more than double when he doubles his stack is one whose chance of doubling is LESS than 50%. Surely, no good player has less than a 50% chance of doubling. Thus, no good player increases his equity more than 2x by doubling his stack.

Where is the flaw in this proof?

[shant]

If sekrah is any older than 15 years old I'm very sorry for your parents and the person they have to live with. Jesus, what a douchebag.

[maurile]

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I interupt this thread for a non tourney question...

I understand you think TD is your strongest game. In the "Other Poker" forum we discuss TD a lot with a fair bit of math. We would love to have your insight in the discussions. (Ok, that wasn't really a question...)

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If Paul decides to discuss poker in a strategy forum, he should use an alias. Otherwise all the trolls will follow him there.

[gergery]

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Given this information, it is very hard for me to include AQ,AJ,KQ,88,77 in his range; even JJ,TT,99 would be kind of weird given the miniraise. So for me the range is AA-QQ and AK and then the JTh is 40.35% which satisfies my definition of close.

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Setting the hand range is an article of faith, we know this, so the call can be anywhere from borderline (at worst) to mandatory depending on what you end up with. At the time considering the action and staring at the guy, here's the hand range I put him on: AK. I threw in underpairs just to add a little hand range variety but in my mind it was AK so the call got easier and easier as the clock ticked.

So that's why I say I got "unlucky" to be 49.6%. I was 51.3% against what I "saw in his soul", but he had a heart and whittled a few points off my chances. I think those were the points I needed.

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A far more interesting question here is since
1. it was fairly clear that you were going to call if he pushed, and
2. since there was no way your opponent could have a hand that you would want him to call with,

“what made you think the additional chips you’d gain from him putting in a bet would offset the fold equity you’d lose, when you’d allow him excellent odds to call your flop check-raise?”

I think your error on the hand was not pushing on the flop, since you expected him to bet

-g

[bravos1]

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However, with the min-raise Villain looks a little weak-passive. Maybe scared of Paul. So the check raise might extract that few extra chips and this guy seems likely to fold with anywhere from 7-10k in chips left behind.

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This was my exact point in my post re this situation. The check-raise was a bit unfortunate when the villian pushes, but all the second guessing here is in hind-sight. I personally feel the check-raise was the right move.. just with a bad outcome.

Hmmm you never see that in poker right? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[gergery]

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To paraphrase Paul from a while back:

There are still a lot of theories in tournament poker still up for debate, but chipEV and tournamentEV being nearly equal when still far from the money isn't really one of them.

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I mostly agree with that, but personally I’ve found in the lower-limit on-line tourneys that when you have a big stack it causes your opponents to play sub-optimally against you. They fold more than they should essentially.

And the greater fold equity I have as a big stack increases the value of my chips at more than a linear rate, mainly at the expense of the middle-sized stacks.

--Greg

[PokrLikeItsProse]

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Paul Phillips is a donk. The proper way to play is to wait for aces or get blinded out.

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Didn't Paul Phillips once go from big stack to out in two hands in a tournament when he caught pocket aces two hands in a row and lost both of them?

[gergery]

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you know, it really can't be stressed enough:

PP has an edge over the field because he recognizes and takes 50% equity when the pot dictates that he only needs 38%. All these assumptions that he's a good player, so he can pass up these edges are fallicious by definition. If one could magically engineer 80%+ bets for their entire stack once an hour, then it would be different, but these things don't just happen.

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So let's say one of his opponents starts going all-in on every hand. It's clear the rest of the table is filled with weak-tight folders. After 5 all-ins in a row, Paul is dealt a hand where he thinks his equity is 51% here, maybe a 98s type hand.

Should he call with his small equity, or should he wait a few hands for something stronger?

If he is playing against opponents signficantly weaker than himself, at what point does he NOT want to forgo the opportunity to stay with them?

--Greg

[PrayingMantis]

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Paul has an edge on the field and marginal chips are increasingly worth less.

[/ QUOTE ] As was demonstrated by several strong players before (gigabet on this board, for instance), your last statement is highly debatable. Players who can handle big stack well, can definitely gain more than what the simple cEV calculation suggest, and might sometimes find that even -cEV spots are actually long term +$EV for them from the perspective of future table control and chips accumulation.

This is of course very different from the ideas presented in TPFAP, but this book is very far from suggesting an optimal MTT play, especially for LAGish, strong players.

[/ QUOTE ] Didn't DS show this to be mathematically impossible some time ago?

Let's take a hypothetical strong player, and assign him cash equity of $X with his starting stack. If he doubles the starting stack, his cash equity becomes $Y. You are postulating a player who is so good at playing a big stack that Y > 2X. So far so good.

One other variable we need to discuss is the player's chance to double up before he busts. Rather than making any assumptions about this, we'll just call it Z.

There are two ways to represent the player's equity at the start of the tournament. One of them is simply X, as we defined it above. The other way is more complicated; he has Z chance of doubling his stack and achieving equity Y, and (1-Z) chance of busting first. So his overall equity is (Z * Y) + ((1-Z) * 0). In other words, X = Z * Y.

Above, we said that Y > 2X. Since X = ZY, then Y > 2ZY. Dividing both sides by Y, 1 > 2Z. Z is therefore less than 0.5.

What did we just prove? In plain English, we proved that the only player whose equity can more than double when he doubles his stack is one whose chance of doubling is LESS than 50%. Surely, no good player has less than a 50% chance of doubling. Thus, no good player increases his equity more than 2x by doubling his stack.

Where is the flaw in this proof?

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fnurt, where were you when you were needed on all those Giga's controversial threads? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] (with the KJ and more recently Q3 hand and long "blocks" post") . I would link to them but I'm a bit too busy at the moment to make the search and stuff ... If nobody else will do it I'll do it in a while. If you haven't read them all, I'd really recommend doing it, no matter if you agree with the ideas or not.

Anyway, I don't remember this proof by DS you are mentioning, was it in context to a debate about something Negreano said somewhere? Regardless, it looks interesting enough. Again, I don't have the time now to sit and see if I find any theoretical-logical flaws in it (not that I'm any kind of authority on such matters...), and from a brief look it looks pretty strong and elegant to me, but I think that some kind of "flaw" will be something along the lines of thinking about a whole MTT as a one "unit", instead of looking at different particular situations, as some players do (Giga and Negreano, for insance, I believe).

I mean, that they recognize _certain_ situations and conditions, in which having X stack is worth more (in terms of accumulating MORE chips from that point and on) than "twice" of having X/2 stack, as a result of specific tendencies of players at the table (I can think of several general examples: around bubble time, and/or when players are generally playing way too timidly against an aggressive big stack, or when some tilting big stack is about to throw ALL his stack away, and you want to be able to take it fast enough before another stack does it, since it might worth a lot to you, etc). Often those situations present themselves only for a short or very short period of time, and therefore it might make sense to take a marginal -cEV gamble in order to build to a certain stack size at a particular point in time. I hope this makes sense.

[gergery]

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Where is the flaw in this proof?

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Well for starters, if If he busts before doubling up, his equity doesn’t have to be zero. He could survive and take second place in the tourney if the chip leader busts everyone else in the meantime. Or just languish and finish just inside the bubble.

And secondly, a good player could very well have a less than 50% chance of doubling up before going to zero. Paul posted this hand where his chances of going to zero were greater than 50-50, and said it’s a good play. So he is a good player, and his chances of going to zero are greater than his chances of doubling up.

I don’t think the model takes into account the extra value you get from more than doubling up.

--Greg