My hand against Chris Moneymaker

[Daliman]

Saying a person has a 10% chance to cash means he must have 10% of the totaL $$$ in a tournament, all else considered equal. So, let's say he's 1 of 10 starting(about the only way to have a 10% chance exactly for these purposes;there's others, but this it cut-and dried) with 1000 in chips, and only 1st place cashes(kinda like a shootout tournament. As a matter of fact EXACTLY like a shootout tournament) First hand, he doubles up. He has 2000 chips of the 10000, i.e. a 20% chance at this point. Next hand, he busts 2 other people. He has 4000 chips of 10000, i.e. a 40% chance of cashing. Next hand, he doubles again, and now has 8000 of the total 10000 chips, i.e., yes an 80% chance of cashing, and well, I guess you got me on the next double up, since, no he doesn't have a 160% chance of cashing, but for most of us, 100% is just fine.
I think where your logic went amiss is the fact that MBE stated that 10% figure, you took that almost as meaning you could have a 20% chance to cash by going all in first hand WSOP main event, which is nowhere near the case, but he is entirely correct in his whole line of thinking, probably even more than he knows, as doubling your stack not only increases your chances by adding chips, it compounds this increase by reducing your competition, albeit very slightly.
If you won an allin first hand this year at ME-WSOP your odds esstially went from 1 in 839 to 2 in 839. No great shakes, of course, but yes, double the chance. Even if you were to bust your whole table on the first hand, you'd still only have inproved to 1 in 83.9, barely over 1%. The AK vs. QJ hand is a classic case of perfect information of risk vs reward. You have a 64% chance of doubling your chances in the tourney. If it were a 55% chance of doubling, well, then, that's more of a decision, predicated more so on your abilty and lack thereof of others at the table, but no player, and I mean NO PLAYER PERIOD, not Hellmuth, Chan, Nyuyen, Cloutier or anyone else is good enough to logically offset those odds enough to warrant folding. Only feasible case here is a late-table situation. First-hand, stick it all in there AK vs. QJo, period.

[daryn]

M.B.E.:

you are wrong.

if you double up on 4 consecutive hands starting the wsop, there's no way you have a 50% chance to money. can we get the man himself David Sklansky to chime in? I just finished tpfap and am eager to learn. i believe m.b.e.'s logic to be ridiculous, but hey, maybe i am wrong, someone please shed some logical light

[Tyler Durden]

I heard a rumor that you stated if you won the WSOP you would repay those who lost their money in the PokerSpot debacle.

Any truth to this?

[M.B.E.]

In this year's WSOP the vast majority of players who finished the first day with T60,000 or more (http://www.thegoodgamblingguide.co.u...ayonechips.htm) did eventually make the money (http://www.thegoodgamblingguide.co.u...worldtitle.htm).

Of course we have to be very careful in drawing conclusions from this. I'm not saying this proves my hypothesis that if you're a slightly-above-average player and manage by fluke to accumulate T80,000 early on you have a better-than-50% chance of getting paid. That would be flawed reasoning. However, it's fair to say that the observation in the previous paragraph is consistent with my hypothesis.

[Daliman]

the 1 in 83.9 chance was to win the tourney, not cash. Cance to cash were you to bust your table would be about 10 or so to 1

[adios]

"PS died owing me about $900 (maybe more, maybe less, tuff to remember now), and, though I'd love to have you pay me that $$$, I kinda have to agree with your stance that those are corporate debts, sorta like if people invested in a company with a positive expectation yet never recieved their dividends,"

Question for you, if you broke even in your poker playing and PokerSpot would have thrived, how much would you have anticipated that your account there would gave grown in value? I don't think people who deposited their funds to play poker had any reasonable expectation of their deposited funds increasing in value because the sight succeeded, likewise I don't think they had any reasonable expectation of having their funds disappear if the sight went under. Sorry you're wrong in believing that it's like an investment that went awry.