WSOP - XRay Vision Winning Chances

[bdohaney]

Ok, here is my SB in a .02/.04... First and foremost, the FUNDAMENTAL THEORUM OF POKER states that you win every time you play as you would if you knew what your opponent was holding. So, barring the fact you might be a total idiot (like someone on this forum who has been banned repeatedly and is quickly working on his next banning...) I would say that your chances of winning the tourney (and being able to keep the money) would be around 30-40%. Reason? In a major casino (like the Rio) against seasoned players, being dealt by a seasoned dealer, the rest of the time you will be caught, disqualified and arrested for cheating. Now if they were x-ray contact lenses, or you were just Clark Kent abusing your powers? I figure you would be about 97%, simply because there is always the chance that you could get pulled all-in when you have the best of it at the time, and get drawn out by the river.

[A_C_Slater]

Boy what a bunch of nits.

Okay, okay, obviously it's not 100% win in the same way it's not 100% certain that aliens will not land on the White house lawn tommorrow morning and declare themselves lords of the Earth.

But it is 99.9999999999999999999% to the ten billionth power certain you would win.

For some odd reason everyone seems to think you'll have to face off against a bigger stack that can bust you. You would simply avoid those rare confrontations. There may be only a few dozen people in the tournament at any time with a bigger stack. And in a field of 6600 they would be easily avoided and many other weak stacks to tangle with instead.

This is all assuming you would make the correct decisions based on the information available, however.

I think everyone is forgetting another huge part. You would also be able to make perfect value bets. If i know you hit top 2 pair against my set, i can bet decently and wait for a raise. If I know you hit a weak ace, i can throw in a smaller bet that may be low enough for you to call. Play super tight early and build your stack, then you can open up and play your big edges without risk of ruin.

[Cerril]

Obviously plenty of pros have a huge chance of making it to day 2. With your specs you should have a well over 50% (WELL over) of not only getting there, but getting there with a massive (10:1, in all likelihood) chip lead.

Now the really interesting question is what optimal strategy is. Obviously the majority of your large bets should be on the river, since any earlier and you run the risk of having someone all in against you with a chance to draw out. Until you've got enough to lose a string of 80/20 draws there's no reason to get your money in with them. Xray specs change the 'ideal' situations.

Keep in mind that optimal strategy for anyone isn't to get in doubleup situations where you're 80/20 or 90/10 to win. The sheer amount of times you'd have to do that would bust anyone who tried. The idea is to increase your stack by 5, 10, or 20% or so at a time. And the number of opportunities for that with your glasses are legion.

As long as you could manage to avoid the complete maniacs (and that includes the good players who will often bet big to try to push you off a hand -- though if you are a relative unknown the smart ones won't any more than we try to bluff the fish), I think chances are monstrous that you'll get to the final table without ever finding yourself all in. And I think the chip disparity by that point would be enough to make the contest trivial.

[wonkadaddy]

your chance isn't a static #, it would depend soemwhat on how your opponents played you (especially headsu at the end). if someone was willing to push their stack all-in every time your chance would go down significantly. practically, your chance would be almost 100%, however.

the only tough part might be playing at the hole-card camera table. how do you play with maximimmun advantage without it being obvious your cheating?

[Cerril]

Well you'd be seen as brilliant since obviously you aren't cheating. Things like your opponents getting 'wise' to your 'style' and pushing all in more frequently are just part of that chance.

The likelihood is that by the time you got to one of the 'featured' tables, you'd have enough of a chip lead to make your chance to win with just good poker enourmous. Add to that the ability to make the right decision on every tough decision and you're far more favored.

[Mark Blade]

What a fun question!

I've been thinking about it for a few minutes and I'm convinced that if you could see the other players cards plus the cards that were coming, you could not possibly lose unless you didn't know much about poker and basic odds.

If you can't see the deck, but only your opponents hole cards, I still think it would be so close to 100% for any player who could understand a basic x-ray strategy that you probably would never see a loss in a lifetime of playing poker tournaments with these glasses. And that might be understating your chances. Again, I might need to coach someone who didn't understand poker very well if they had the glasses, but for me, it would be a breeze.

Everyone seems fixated on all those all-in confrontations where you won't necessarily be an overwhelming favorite. But that's not where all your chips would come from. There would be so many hands throughout the tournament where you could easily steal blinds with an appropriately-sized bet. That would be a ton of chips right there alone. But possibly even more money would come from all those times when other players would make a pre-flop raise to try to steal the blinds or just because they have a fairly strong hand. You would know that their hand was either weak or not strong enough to withstand a lot of heat and you'd come over the top. They would fold almost every time as you could easily predict and your stack would keep growing and growing and growing. You would soon be in a position where no one at your table could ever put you in bust-out danger and then you could start pressing your advantages at every turn. Even when you get beat here and there, the blind steals and steals from the blind-stealers would quickly replace those lost chips and you'd be constantly amassing more chips. When Carlos Mortenson won the WSOP a few years back, he raised almost every hand before the flop when he was the big chip stack and amassed chips like crazy because people don't want to put their survival at risk against the big stack except with hands that they would be willing to die with. And when it got heads up, you'd probably have a 100 to 1 or even 1000 to 1 lead by then and with your x-ray vision it would be almost impossible for anyone to overtake you even with the craziest great luck streak they could possibly muster. Remember, the WSOP isn't some hi-speed Sit 'N Go. It's days and days and days of hands that no one at your table with have much of anything hand-wise and every single one of those pots and a ton of others would all be yours for the taking.

Since I only thought about this for a few minutes, I could be convinced otherwise with a great argument against what I've posted. But I feel pretty confident in my conclusions at the moment and would be surprised if someone could convince me otherwise. Of course, like another poster wrote, I'd love to hear what Sklansky thinks about this.

Best regards,

Mark Blade
www.MarkBlade.com