Sklansky's purgatory -- how often does this happen?

[RiverDood]

Let's start with the issue in Saw7988's post -- he got ground down to nothing playing in an STT with a long stretch of dead cards plus QQ and JJ that didn't work out.

Now let's describe the general problem: going for an entire session without a single opportunity to put a lot of chips to work while having the best of it. (For this truly to be Sklansky's purgatory, we'd have to know our opponent's exact hands. But for practical purposes, let's assume that we can put everyone on logical ranges of hands, and that our reads are good.)

I'm guessing that such circumstances happen in no more than 2% of online tournaments, but as much as 5% of home game tournaments where the blinds go up faster and there aren't as many hands played per level.

It's rare. And most of the time when we bust out, it's because we misplayed some hands -- or missed some steal opportunities -- or got hammered by a bad beat or two. All the same, it strikes me that every now and then, it's possible to play intelligent poker for the entire session and end up staring at the felt.

Thoughts?

[Iceman]

You have to understand that the short-term luck factor in most forms of poker is so high that no matter how well you play, you will lose a significant fraction of your sessions. This is especially true in tournaments.

[RiverDood]

Luck's always a part of poker, and shame on me if I didn't express the question more precisely. What I'm focusing on are the sessions where there was nothing grotesquely unlucky about a single hand (no 3-outers that some other guy hit on a river) . . . and no glaring (or moderate) mistakes in terms of hand selection, reads or post-flop play . . . but where nothing worked all afternoon, until the chips disappeared.

I'd find it refreshing if someone argued that such sessions never occur. In the end, there was always a better play available. Or an egregious bad beat that shouldn't have been a bad beat. Then we could say that any loss could be attributed to one of those two factors. We cheer ourselves up by saying that the loss, in some form, was a fluke.

In effect: "Give me the worst 15 seconds to play again, and if the odds or my judgment come out the way they were supposed to, I could be headed toward the final table as chip leader."

It's more jarring to think that even in a multi-hour tournament, where patience and selective aggression usually pay off, there occasionally could be a nonstop run of hands that just won't work.

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
in a multi-hour tournament, where patience and selective aggression usually pay off,

[/ QUOTE ]
Nonsense.

Usually, you get unlucky at some point, either by getting outdrawn, or by running into a surprisingly good hand, and you lose.

many of the hands that affect my play, particularly in a tournament are played exactly as i would if i had the chance again. example, last live tourny i was in i had JT and flopped the straight to the Queen on a rainbow, i trapped my man and got all of my chips in. he had QT, top pair with a gutshot. The turn was a ten, giving him 3 outs to make full on the river, and 3 to tie. He hit a Queen to make full. no way would i change my play, and luck took me down once again.

[Brad22]

You have to play bad hands in a tourney as well. If you're not getting any hands, you have to pick good spots and try and steal chips. If sounds like you're talking about a cash game. There is no time in a tourney to be waiting and hope that everything works out. Plus, you're gonna have to get lukcy on good and bad hands to win - just the way it is.

I played one of the UB $1 turbo MTTs this evening. Early on I caught great hands in good spots, and I played them well. After the first hour break I was 7th in chips with over 10000. By the next break, I was down to 5000; 20 minutes afterward, I was down to 2200 and, with blinds at 1600 and antes at 150, was forced to push on a bad ace that didn't hold up.

What happened? Usually I can trace a tournament failure to one or more bad beats or bad decisions, but this one was different. Once my stack hit its peak, I played maybe 5 hands (not including BB hands). One was AJ, which ultimately lost to AK. I didn't overplay that hand, but just called a 2x preflop raise (neither of us connected and we checked it down). The rest were marginal; KJ, Q10, suited connectors, that kind of thing, none of which connected with the flop and were thus discarded. I folded all the rest, watching helplessly as my once proud stack was devoured away to barely anything.

Granted, this was a turbo tournament, where the blinds and antes increase at ridiculous speed, but I was astonished at how quickly my fortune changed. After being in the top 10 fairly deep into the tournament, I didn't even finish in the money. Other than throwing my stack around and stealing more often when I had the chance, I don't know what I could have done differently. No bad beats or debatable calls--just a terrible run of cards that, combined with the level of blinds/antes, killed my chances.

[pokerjoker]

If the most skilled player who makes the least mistakes always won I would be 8 tabling $11 SnGs all day.

[RiverDood]

Yeah, that's exactly the sort of experience I'm wanting to analyze. I've played easily 100 tournaments online or live since Jan. 1, 2005, ranging from freerolls to $200 buyins, and from single-table SNGs to 2,000-person extravaganzas. I'm no superstar, but overall, poker is profitable for our household.

What got me curious was that in 97 or 98 of the past year's tourneys, I've either won with good cards/good play/good luck, or lost with bad cards/bad play/bad luck. But there are two or three weird outliers where all the chip erosion happened on reasonable hands that played out "normally." For example: my AK played heads up twice vs. a PP when I didn't catch. Or my Ax took a stab at a JJA flop before backing off when it was clear that I was up against Jx. Or I had to play short-stacked with a LAG chip leader one or two seats to my left, limiting my ability to steal.

In short, these are cases where nothing went especially right, but nothing went brutally wrong. I'm not angry or whiny about it; hey, I'm the first to affirm that a lot of things (luck included) have to go right to win a tournament. But what's weird is the sense that all the chips can slip away without a single clear bit of ruinous luck or play.

I'll agree with Pzhon that most of the time, we bust out of tournaments with obviously bad play or bad luck. I wasn't trying to suggest anything otherwise. The point of the original post -- which eventually I'll express coherently -- is that on rare occasions, what seems like decent play and middling luck can be fatal, too.