Why the WSOP main event winner is not necessarily "great'

[UATrewqaz]

Saw a thread (Barry Greenstien's interview/article thing) about how big tourney winners are not really the best players and I couldn't agree more.

Greg Raymer, by all accounts a very good if not great player, cannot be considered in the same breath as the players mentioned in Greenstien's article for this simple reason.

hand went something like this (from memory)

Raymer A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] Q [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]
Mike "the mouth" T [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

Flop
4 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 7 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

Raymer all in on semi-bluff
Mike calls (has Raymer covered).

Raymer 52%
Mike 47% (according to ESPN).

Turn 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] giving Raymer nut flush and huge pot and eliminating one of players who was gunning for him at that table.

He loses this 50/50 and he goes home and nobody here even knows who he is, a single pot make or break. With the high degree of variance in poker a single pot cannot make someone great.

As Barry pointed out in a cash game where you don't bust out a single big pot coin flip win is relatively meaningless.

And several hands later John Murphy joins the table as chip lead (Raymer a close 2nd).

Raymer A [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]
Murphy J [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

Murphy makes a bet, Raymer goes all in, Murphy asks "How much do you have?" very eagerly but upon realizing it's probably close to all his chips he throws away his slightly better hand. Murphy has guts this one hand and Raymer might go home.

I should also add that I do not think Raymer's play is bad in either of these hands, in fact they are both very good plays imho.

[jba]

raymer loses that hand a LOT less than 50% of the time. If matusow folds 75% of the time here (possible), raymer only busts out on this hand 12% of the time.

ok so he's not as good as barry, never claimed to be. I think if you beat a field that good you have to be a very, very solid player.

[istewart]

For the first hand, going by ESPN, Matusow raised 9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], seemingly in LP. Raymer reraised A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]J [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] from the SB. Matusow called. The flop was T9x with two diamonds, Raymer pushed. Yes, I am a nit.

In the Murphy hand, Raymer raised with AKs, some donk reraised with KQo, Murphy called with JJ, and Raymer reraised again, not all-in though, IIRC.

[autobet]

Any player who wins a large field tournament will need to will their share of coinflips no matter how great they are.

Raymer freely admits he is not the greatest player in the world. Refreshing.

[utmt40]

I was also thinking Mike has 79 of spades too. Thanks for making me feel not crazy. LOL

[Sykes]

[ QUOTE ]


hand went something like this (from memory)

Raymer A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] Q [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]
Mike "the mouth" T [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

Flop
4 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 7 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

Raymer all in on semi-bluff
Mike calls (has Raymer covered).

Raymer 52%
Mike 47% (according to ESPN).

Turn 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] giving Raymer nut flush and huge pot and eliminating one of players who was gunning for him at that table.

He loses this 50/50 and he goes home and nobody here even knows who he is, a single pot make or break. With the high degree of variance in poker a single pot cannot make someone great.

And several hands later John Murphy joins the table as chip lead (Raymer a close 2nd).

Raymer A [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]
Murphy J [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

Murphy makes a bet, Raymer goes all in, Murphy asks "How much do you have?" very eagerly but upon realizing it's probably close to all his chips he throws away his slightly better hand. Murphy has guts this one hand and Raymer might go home.

I should also add that I do not think Raymer's play is bad in either of these hands, in fact they are both very good plays imho.

[/ QUOTE ]

First hand, Mike had raised with 98o and Greg re-raised with AJs. Mike calls the re-raise and greg moves in on the flop with a huge overbet and Mike calls with TPWK. The call from mike required 2/3th of his stack but it did not put him in a situation where he was short-stacked. However, I have seen this play many times and based on the information given to me on ESPN, I think that both made a tilt play. Regardless if they both thought that they had the best hand an overbet/call of 3x pot is tilting is my opinion.

Barry is correct that greg is a coinflip for all his money and won the coinflip but the number of times does not equal 100%, so it will never be a "True coinflip"

On the next hand:

According to ESPN, John murphy has just been moved to the feature table with a huge chip stack (800K, 2/4K or 3/6K blinds i believe). He's was informed that seat 4 (raymer) has been a table bully and just took a huge chunk out of seat 1 (Mike M.)

Greg open-raised to 20K (i think) with Ah Kh
Unknown calls with KQo
John murphy makes it 80K with JJ
Greg re-re-raises to 200K (with about 450K left)
Unknown folds.
Murphy thinks, then says good raise and folds.

If murphy has guts this hand, he could be easily dominated by QQ/KK/AA. And if you're up against an equally large chip stack, why would you play against the chip stack and be crippled if you lose a coinflip, when you can just push against the small stacks to build your small stack.

I don't think Barry is being arrogant here, just stating the "facts" but he must realize (and I'm sure he does) that to win a tournament like the WSOP, you must dodge most if not all landmines, not get outdrawn, and win coinflips. Greg even admits that is what happened at the main event last year.

[slickpoppa]

Every single player from the final table last year was all-in at some point before the final table with a coinflip or worse. And some were all-in several times.

[UATrewqaz]

I think everyone know's that to win a huge tournament (hundreds if not thousands of entrants) that you need a few coinflips to go your way and have to dodge a few bad beats.

But the point is that CONSISTENCY is the mark of good and great players and 1 big important tournament does not consistency make.

[Zetack]

Its pretty damn hard to figure out who's a great player versus who is just a pretty darn good one. (although I would contend that you have to be at least a pretty darn good one to win any major tournament with over 400 entrants).

The problems is that there is just no reliable standard for what makes a player great. As an example, according to good 'ole Barry, the successful tourney players we know of, actually aren't great players at all. And the luck factor and variance is such a huge factor that simple observation doesn't work very well.

Obviously, winning a big tournament, by itself, does not make a player great. In fact, looking at any one tournamemt win in isolation could lead to the opposite conclusion, that the player sucks because of the many lucky plays that have to happen for the player to win.

Even greater folly is to look at any one hand or several hands from a tournament and go, these are clearly not expert plays so this is not a great player.

Anyway, without a clear standard of greatness, any such debate, while fun, is pretty darn meaningless.

--Zetack

[Sykes]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


hand went something like this (from memory)

Raymer A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] Q [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]
Mike "the mouth" T [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

Flop
4 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 7 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

Raymer all in on semi-bluff
Mike calls (has Raymer covered).

Raymer 52%
Mike 47% (according to ESPN).

Turn 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] giving Raymer nut flush and huge pot and eliminating one of players who was gunning for him at that table.

He loses this 50/50 and he goes home and nobody here even knows who he is, a single pot make or break. With the high degree of variance in poker a single pot cannot make someone great.

And several hands later John Murphy joins the table as chip lead (Raymer a close 2nd).

Raymer A [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]
Murphy J [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

Murphy makes a bet, Raymer goes all in, Murphy asks "How much do you have?" very eagerly but upon realizing it's probably close to all his chips he throws away his slightly better hand. Murphy has guts this one hand and Raymer might go home.

I should also add that I do not think Raymer's play is bad in either of these hands, in fact they are both very good plays imho.

[/ QUOTE ]

First hand, Mike had raised with 98o and Greg re-raised with AJs. Mike calls the re-raise and greg moves in on the flop with a huge overbet and Mike calls with TPWK. The call from mike required 2/3th of his stack but it did not put him in a situation where he was short-stacked. However, I have seen this play many times and based on the information given to me on ESPN, I think that both made a tilt play. Regardless if they both thought that they had the best hand an overbet/call of 3x pot is tilting is my opinion.

Barry is correct that greg is a coinflip for all his money and won the coinflip but the number of times does not equal 100%, so it will never be a "True coinflip"

On the next hand:

According to ESPN, John murphy has just been moved to the feature table with a huge chip stack (800K, 2/4K or 3/6K blinds i believe). He's was informed that seat 4 (raymer) has been a table bully and just took a huge chunk out of seat 1 (Mike M.)

Greg open-raised to 20K (i think) with Ah Kh
Unknown calls with KQo
John murphy makes it 80K with JJ
Greg re-re-raises to 200K (with about 450K left)
Unknown folds.
Murphy thinks, then says good raise and folds.

If murphy has guts this hand, he could be easily dominated by QQ/KK/AA. And if you're up against an equally large chip stack, why would you play against the chip stack and be crippled if you lose a coinflip, when you can just push against the small stacks to build your small stack.

I don't think Barry is being arrogant here, just stating the "facts" but he must realize (and I'm sure he does) that to win a tournament like the WSOP, you must dodge most if not all landmines, not get outdrawn, and win coinflips. Greg even admits that is what happened at the main event last year.

[/ QUOTE ]

Corrections I need to make having just watched this hand.

Mike has 9s 7s and open-raised in LP to 12,000 (Blinds 2-4K) to "steal" the blinds. Greg re-raises in the SB to 36,000 with Ad Jd to try to win the pot right there. Mike called however, trying to place the image of "I'm not going to go away just because you re-raise my steal-raise, let's gamble". The flop comes Td 9d 3h (or Th 9d 3d) Raymer moves all-in very quickly (might have taken longer, ESPN editing etc..) for 241K (into a pot of 74,000 if I'm correct in there is no antes but I really doubt that, so I would put the pot at about 76,500 (500 ante))

In my opinion, with the facts, information, and knowledge I have about NLHE (however limited it may be) and Mike M. shown by ESPN, this is a very dangerous and reckless play. Unless raymer believed that Mike would call him with a pair of 9's/10's, his move of all-in is not correct because he is not beating any hand besides 9's/10's.

Fortunately for greg, mike was tilting and called him with a pair of 9's with a weak kicker. It was silly for Mike to call this vast overbet of the pot with MPWK even if he puts Greg on two high cards.

Why risk 2/3rds of your stack when you have 90-100BB and the only one challenging you at the table is Greg? Maybe Mike thought if he got rid of Raymer, he could bully the table even more and not have an aggressive person keep re-rasing his steal-raises and he could become a dominant force in the tournament if he wins this hand against raymer.

In conclusion, it was a foolish play by both people, but raymer got lucky and caught his flush to win the hand.