What if you knew everyone's hole cards? (continued)

[SossMan]

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2 threads on the same subject is typically frowned upon so starting a new thread was mostly unnecessary.

That said, I didn't have a problem with you starting a new thread and thought it was mostly okay.
You're obviously being quite polite and I think the previous poster's comments were a bit harsh.

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Thanks. I appreciate the information. I'm trying to climb out of the bottom quartile of knowledge re newgroups, blogs, etc.

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you're doin' fine, Bob. Civility is a rare trait, especially in this forum. BTW, perhaps you would have more success cross posting this to the 'multitable tournament' forum rather than the WPT forum. You will be fishing from a smarter breed of fish (so to speak) over there and may get the more detailed analysis that you are looking for.

FWIW, I think we might be running in circles a bit here, but I am convinced that you greatly underestimate the fact that you will virtually never put all your chips (or even a large portion of your stack) at risk. Due to the structure of these larger tournaments, you can afford to play small pots early (or large pots when you have a virtual lock...like 98% or better), and due to this fact, you will have a monster chip lead late.

Also, you never addressed a point that another poster brought up in the other thread:

You know a much larger proportion of the deck than your opponent. You know with much greater accuracy if he's drawing to one out when he thinks he has 5. You will know when 3 other aces and one king have been folded when you have xx and he has AK. This knowledge will enable you to chop so many pots so often that you will be afforded the opportunity to start taking on a little bit of 'risk' (by risk, i mean letting him draw to 3 outs for 10% of your stack) later in the tourney.

I'm not convinced that you have thought this through enough or have spoken w/ skilled tournament players enough to see the tremendous power that this would provide.

[benkahuna]

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Thanks. I appreciate the information. I'm trying to climb out of the bottom quartile of knowledge re newgroups, blogs, etc.

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I respect you more for not wasting that much time on the net. :P

I really appreciated your response to me in this thread even though I still think this thread is redundant (though I see your reasoning for a second one).

[TimTimSalabim]

I'm surprised DS has not weighed in on this topic, he usually likes these kinds of conjectures.

[CieloAzor]

I didn't bother responding to the first thread but I'm with Soss all the way. I've thought about this before on my own and you'd get way too many free chips with this skill. It wouldn't be long before nobody in the tourney has you covered, and it's all gravy from there. The arguments have been laid out several times, so I won't waste my time repeating them.

I say you'd win over 99%.

[HouseBlouse]

What if? I do know everyones hole cards, bought a 20 dollar program off the net and it works...

I think its pretty safe to say that the worst you could possibly do, assuming you knew how to play poker as well as always knew exactly what everybody else had, is to repeat Stu Ungar's success...which is to say, you could win the largest poker tournaments so often, it would be ridiculous. You would be the only person to wade through 5000+ fields to a win more than once.

I mean, think about it. Nobody ever gets to bluff you. That kind of table image, plus the large stack you will develop, will force everyone to play like they did the last time Stu won...that is, they'll play for 2nd place. Once everyone fears you and your huge stack, you will take all the good gambles, knowing that even if you lose 6 coinflips in a row, you still have everyone covered and can reaccumulate chips by knowing what everyone else has. Is it possible the cards/players will put you in a situation to not win the WSOP main event every single year? Perhaps, but its so unlikely that it won't happen more than twice.

[Shoe]

Would you want to lose a few hands on purpose here or there to make people think you aren't perfect? (After winning your 5th WSOP in a row)

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I say you'd win over 99%.

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1st Place!? Thats just ridiculous.

No matter how much you want to avoid it, over time, you will have to gamble with something like a 80/20 edge (overpair vs underpair) for a significant amount of your stack. Specially if its at the final table since you wont always have the luxury of trying to accumulate chips with less risk.

And dont forget that you will get less and less information about folded cards as tables get short and less players receive cards. In fact you could say that you will be at a relative disadvantage (compared to your huge advantage beforehand) when you get to heads up play - as you will *only* know your opponents cards and not the other cards that have been folded by the other players at the table.

...and never forget murphys law.

Id guess that a great player could win 1st place roughly about 40% of the time. Which is still a very large number.

You could definately get in the money +95%.

[Boris]

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2) Usually, few big pots are played in the early rounds. The consensus strategy (with which I agree) is to avoid big confrontations early on unless you are a huge favorite. Such situations often won't arise frequently. Even when they do, you won't always win them. You are very likely to make the middle stages, but not necessarily with an overpowering stack.


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You will reach the middle stages of the tournament 99.9% of the time and you will have at least twice the average chip count. This will be because you can play crazy loose. You might not win many big pots but you will win a ton of small pots with virtually zero risk.

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3) Unexpected things happen. Sometimes you will "see" someone try to steal with J8, you will reraise with 96 because "he can't call," he'll call anyway, hit the flop and you'll have to fold. Granted, these things will happen a minority of the time, but in some tournaments it will be a big enough minority to be relevant.

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Why would you ever come over the top like this if you could see his cards?

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4) With nine other people at the table, many of your pre-flop decisions will be murky. Example: Someone raises in early position with 66, you have AT, and someone behind you has KQ. If you fold in these situations, you will sometimes not get enough better ones for enough chips to build a big stack early. If you call, raise (or move-in), you will end up playing respectable-size pots where you are the favorite, but not overwhelmingly.

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I'm not sure how you reach the conclusion that you would play a decent sized pot when your not a favorite. I would love to play pots aganst the small pocket pairs like this. If big money goes in, you would ALWAYS be a huge favorite.

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5) The cards and your opponents won't always cooperate with the approach of playing big pots only when you're either a monster favorite on (or maybe before) the flop or have the best hand on the river. Most often, the big money goes in before the river, and the pre-river monster favorite situations for big money aren't that frequent.

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I disagree with this as well. The simple but effective strategy is to just fold to a big bet when you aren't a big favorite.
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6) When the tournament "really starts" in the late stages, almost every pot is raised. Usually, you won't be a monster favorite over the raiser or over someone who calls your raise/reraise. You'll be facing a lot of 52/48 to 2/1 situations for decent money against short stacks who decide "it's time to gamble." and big stacks who get to act before you to punish the short stacks. Example: You have AQ utg, a small (but not microscopic) stack has 66, and the big blind (who has a big stack and is very aggressive) has KJ.

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You can easily avoid this situation by folding your hand pre-flop. The simple fact that you will know exactly when you can steal the blinds will more than make up for it.

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7) A 2x average player (which I postulated) will make mistakes, especially in multi-way pots. The magical powers don't include the ability to flawlessly calculate odds and EV under playing conditions.


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You can avoid all those situations where EV calculations actually matter. Not like anybody actually does that often in a real tournament anyways.

[Exitonly]

dont feel like rading all the replies (sorry) but..

win% wouldn't be 90+, but not for the reasons you said.. it's because of heads up... throughout the rest of the tournament you should be able to take down a HUGE amount of hands w/o showdown... just steal the pots that can be stolen, sinc eyou'll clearly know which can...

but heads up your opponent could just turn it into a crapshoot that you only win like 80% of the time.. so i think you could FT a tournament nearly every time.. and win it probably 80% of the time.