How much of an edge woud the best players fold early? - Page 5

MLG · #41 09-23-2004, 12:39 PM

I give up, there have been like nine-gazillion posts explaining why this broke go home thing your talking about is completely wrong. Just go back and reread them.

Richard Tanner · #42 09-23-2004, 12:43 PM

Wait, so you're saying that you shouldn't listen to the "Get broke, go Home" Theory. I admit that I may not know everything about poker, so thank God for people, like David Sklansky, who've forgotten more then most of us know.
He mentions it as a chapter in his book. I'm sorry but I just have to believe him on this. That factor is important in tournement play.

Cody

fnurt · #43 09-23-2004, 12:54 PM

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I suppose I just don't like going in with a 30% (I'm not sure what the real percentage is, but it can't be much better if it's at all better) chance of winning, even if it means nonupiling up. Cash game, certainly. Tournement, which was what I thought we were talking about, no way. That's just the difference between the two, go broke and your done. Odds alone don't justify the call.
That said, if this bizarre situation happens, go for it, math be damnned, that's just to odd to pass up.

Cody

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Let me explain it to you this way. Obviously, doubling or tripling your stack doesn't win the tournament by itself. You are going to have to increase it many, many times over to win the tournament. Since you rarely hold the uncrackable nuts, every time you try to increase your stack you have to take some kind of risk.

Most of us would be happy to get our money in as a 70-30 favorite; you don't get many situations more favorable than that. But if you get into two of these situations, you will bust half the time. If you get into three of them, you will bust 65% of the time. That's not to say you shouldn't take the risks, it's just the nature of tournaments. Over the long haul, if you always got your money in as a 70-30 favorite, you would win a ton of money.

Trying to find a strategy that can win every single tournament is just self-defeating in the long run. There is no such strategy (imagine if two people both played it!). In the perfect world, you would never have to take a risk for all your chips; you could steal small pots without a showdown, never get into a confrontation with someone who has you covered, and the like. But even in that perfect world, there's still plenty of risk, it's just that you aren't risking the whole stack at once. If you get unlucky and lose one or two such "low-risk" hands, suddenly you are a short stack and you no longer have the luxury of avoiding gambles.

In any event, the bottom line is that the 70% chance you face when you go all-in with AA is nothing unusual, compared to the ordinary risks you take during the course of the tournament. It's just that you are taking a big chunk of that risk at one time, with the potential reward of multiplying your stack by 10. Taking the risk in small chunks, with a smaller reward each time, actually makes the overall risk of busting greater.

Maybe thinking of it this way will help. Going all-in with AA gives you a 30% chance of increasing your stack by a factor of 10. Now, is there any normal strategy you can pursue that gives you a 30% chance of increasing your stack by this amount? This might not seem intuitively obvious to you, but the answer is almost certainly no. No one has that big an edge over the field. So given that you're going to have to increase your stack by this amount at some point on the road to winning the tournament, going all-in right now gives you the best chance of getting there.

jaybee_70 · #44 09-23-2004, 01:02 PM

Paul,
Just to be clear:
Push here you will?
Sorry couldn't resist. Thank you for taking the time to post here.

Joe

Richard Tanner · #45 09-23-2004, 01:09 PM

Wow, what an articulate and non-ass like response. Thanks for the different perspective, and with that in mind, I think I can agree on the majority of it.

Cody

alittle · #46 09-23-2004, 01:58 PM

Paul, I don't know if you're playing in Aruba next week, but the future seems clear to me now. You are seated to my right UTG and raise the first hand of the tournament. I have no choice but to go all-in to bring this thread to life.

Ugly scenario #2 - the rest of the table are all 2+2'rs and every one else goes all in as well to make the impossible possible.

Paul Phillips · #47 09-23-2004, 02:11 PM

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Wow, what an articulate and non-ass like response. Thanks for the different perspective, and with that in mind, I think I can agree on the majority of it.

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Do you have an aversion to reading material that wasn't just posted? I'm sure that thread was already linked to. There are dozens like it. It's only a "different perspective" if you've never read any archived thread about this subject.

pudley4 · #48 09-23-2004, 06:04 PM

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so you know that it is likely that they will eventually be putting their chips in when they are at a huge disadvantage to our hand. Given that... that makes this an easy folding situation.

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Just to point out another problem with your logic - after the hand, 8 of the players will have busted out, and your table will now be broken. Good luck ever seeing that one really bad player again this tournament.

Richard Tanner · #49 09-23-2004, 10:45 PM

Christ Paul, ya caught me. I hate to read, and in fact I love only to make posts and express opinions that I don't even believe only to get a response out of you. Thanks for repling, you fell right into my snare.
No I read the post, and no I can't explain why his post rubbed me the right way. Maybe it's only a semantic difference, but at any rate I could relate to the way he wrote it. I'm not sure if I agree totally, but I can see his point. I respect his point, in part because he phrased it like a discussion, not an argument with a prize for the winner.
I realize you and I disagree on a few points. I, for one, enjoy this. I respect your knowledge as a winning player, and look forward to your response, even if I know I might think differently. The difference is that you seem to always be on the attack, as if it's your goal to go after the poster not the post. Refer to the best lesson my mother ever gave me "If you can't say anything nice..."

Cody

Paul Phillips · #50 09-23-2004, 11:22 PM

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I'm not sure if I agree totally, but I can see his point.

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On this particular subject I am perhaps more strident than usual because people say things like you have in the above. I mean, what does it take for total agreement? My desire to have faith in the basic intelligence of pokerkind is severely tested when some people are so resistant to a straightforward and laboriously elaborated mathematical illustration.

Obviously I'm generally fairly confident in opinions expressed: this isn't news. Is that a bug or a feature? How well are you served if you disagree out of spite?

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I respect his point, in part because he phrased it like a discussion, not an argument with a prize for the winner.

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If this is the sort of basis on which you make decisions then you are likely to continue to struggle. This subject only seems like a discussion with an uncertain outcome to you because you don't understand it. I could pretend that it's a give and take of ideas where we're each on a path of intellectual discovery, but pretending is not my strong suit. In reality it's just me and others beating our heads against the wall for no apparent reason.

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Refer to the best lesson my mother ever gave me "If you can't say anything nice..."

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If my writings on this subject fall under your "not nice" category then I doubt whether most people would prefer me to follow your advice.