Now David, I am angry!!!!

[Expunge]

[ QUOTE ]
If I concentrated on tournaments I would be among the top twenty in the world. And my EV for the year would be less than the better 60-120 players.

[/ QUOTE ]

PROVE IT. Play me heads up sit n goes on Full Tilt...I am one of the best online players in world and will play any stakes any game and I assure you over 100 games you end up a 75% LOSER David.

[/ QUOTE ]

even if he does take this challenge it doesn't prove anything either way. you're comparing apples with oranges.

Id like to see him prove it as well but as long as he hold the opinion that he is losing valuable time by playing tourneys i dont he will step up.

[David Sklansky]

"You chastised people for responding, "by the seat of their pants", but if the question is too dificult to get a precise mathematical answer in a live game anyway then what relevance does the correct mathematical solution have? I would imagine that what separates a lot of great poker players from just good ones is how close their approximations are at the table which allow them to work things out quickly enough to be considered by the seat of their pants.

The ability to arrive at the "correct" answer doesn't help much if you need more than a few minutes to get there does it? "

You can't do the math at the table. But you can do it before you post an answer. At the very least you can point out that it is a matter of figuring out the probability that an individual has a calling hand, and then figuring out the probability that one out of eight will have such a hand, and then figuring out the chances that a caller will lose to you and combining it with the chances you steal $300. Estimating all this fairly accurately is extremely easy and few on this forum even tried, or even seemed to realize that the question boiled down to that.

As for how these academic questions matter in the heat of battle the answer is this: You should work out several dozen of these type scenarios, memorize the answer and then extrapolate. I guarantee that Chris Ferguson has done this. For instance if it turns out that moving in with QJs is correct but close, you could deduce that moving in $2000 would be wrong and that moving in $800 with T9s would be right and that moving in $1100 with JTs if three players folded would be right, etc. You could also deduce that these close move ins would turn to limps or folds if players were calling with ace rag. See what I am saying?

[DCIAce]

[ QUOTE ]
PROVE IT. Play me heads up sit n goes on Full Tilt...I am one of the best online players in world and will play any stakes any game and I assure you over 100 games you end up a 75% LOSER David.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heh, this is amusing on multiple levels.

First, he didn't say anything about heads-up play whatsoever.

Second, I doubt he'd want to waste his time for an immaterial amount of money against someone whom he has nothing to gain by beating.

Third, I doubt he'd lose 75% to anyone, no matter how good. I'm thinking 65% or so is the biggest edge one high level player would have over another.

Fourth, why the hell are you claiming to be "one of the best online players in the world" with absolutely nothing to back it up, and four posts to your name? I'm sure there are at least 100 players on this site whom are better than you, and that's a terribly small estimate. (notably, 2 of your 4 posts were about a hand which you completely botched PF and on the flop)

Anyways, I'm not saying I completely believe the "Top 20 if I concentrated on tournaments" statement, nor do I think the answer to the Question which led to this thread was a purely mathematical question. However, I just had to respond to this complete joke of a reply. This is more of a "laugh at the braggart idiot" post, than a "defend DS" post. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[DonkeyKong]

<<The question as it stands is almost pure math.>>

This is an opinion and not a fact. You don't know the likelihood of getting called with AQ or 88. Saying you do discredits your argument.

I don't know how to do the math as well as you or Howard Lederer or Chris Ferguson but I do understand the importance of math.

The question as stated had an answer that was pretty close to going either way... and my math was good enough to get the correct answer. But where to go from there? You can argue that if its $1 +EV, then you should do it BECAUSE OF THE MATH... What I am saying is that doing such is indeed being a robot and not using any poker savvy whatsoever. IF that is your approach, it may work better than somebody elses and it may not. But come on, you cannot know for sure who is going to call you with A9-suited in that situation. Saying otherwise is being blinded by the math, in my opinion.

btw, I do believe in math... no matter how this post is interpreted.

[italianstang]

"If I concentrated on tournaments I would be among the top twenty in the world."

Simply using math skills that I learned from reading pretty much all of your books Mr. Sklansky, and reading nearly all of your posts on this site, I don't understand how you can make this claim. There must be a way to quantify players' tournament skill mathematically. Maybe it takes in to account their wins versus entries (or cashes versus entries), or how they do traditionally in one game or another. Short term fluctuations would have to be figured in somehow too of course, Phil Hellmuth had six cashes at this year's WSOP and never finished better than sixth, what does that mean? I feel like it is certainly not my place to make poker requests of players/authors who have vastly superior skills than me BUT it seems that if you are going to go ahead and make statements such as the one quoted above, there should be backing. The most obvious backing would be for you to dedicate yourself to the tourney circuit for a year or two and prove it, however that could be unrealistic for lots of reasons. INSTEAD, I propose that you do something that would be much more interesting to read and probably take you only five minutes instead of two years. Give us some formula or math situation that quantifies player skill in tournaments and figure how you fit in to the top 20.

[blackaces13]

[ QUOTE ]
See what I am saying?

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely. Thanks for the reply.

[Nottom]

You have to remember that David considers himself one of the top 5 all-around poker players in the world and would consider himself the favorite at a table that featured a mixed game including some less common variations of the game (since David figures himself to have an advantage in any non-traditional game). It could be argued that Tourney NL-Holdem is one of the most math based games out there, so it doesn't take much of a stretch for David to claim he could be a top tourney player.

On the other hand David, do you not think the extra publicity you would get as a result of being a successful tourney player might make it worth playing in at least the Televised tourneys even if they are inherently -EV compared to you normal game? It would certainly make selling TPFAP a lot easier if it was written by a WPT/WSOP champ.

[DonkeyKong]

Ted Forrest summed it up nicely in an interview for the Plaza tournament a few months ago:
Something to the effect of "it doesn't take too long to learn the mathematics of the game. The real differentiator is being able to read people."

I believe Mr Sklansky certainly could be up there or even ahead of players like Howard Lederer if he focused on tournaments but I am very curious now if Mr Sklansky has created a serious handicap for himself by his overbelief in his quant-only approach...

It is like the very well-educated Wall Street Strategist who insists the S&P500 is undervalued by x% because of all his models.

The truth is that there is something called 'model risk' which I am sure Mr Sklansky is familiar with but it basically means that relationships are often dynamic and therefore your quant-model will not be accurate when this is the case. Some things just cannot be forecasted without significant error.

It occurs to me that maybe there is just a disconnect between internet players and B&M players. It seems to me that assumptions like 'I won't get called by AJ in this situation' is too dynamic an assumption to be able to use math-only effectively. You will get called with AJ often. You might get called by J8 if the other guy has an equal stack and feels it is time to gamble with you for chips. Math can spit out an answer for this but trust me, it is not going to be without very significant error.

Maybe it is that he is overestimating the competition or maybe it is that the competition is just more willing to gamble and doesn't believe as strongly in things such as the 'Gap Concept'...

[Stew]

[ QUOTE ]
Math can spit out an answer for this but trust me, it is not going to be without very significant error.

Maybe it is that he is overestimating the competition or maybe it is that the competition is just more willing to gamble and doesn't believe as strongly in things such as the 'Gap Concept'...

[/ QUOTE ]

The math is never in error, what you are calculating with the math is the EV of a situation. That doesn't mean you will always win a certain bet, it just means the bet has a favorable result more often than not. What you have done is applied results-oriented thinking to the situation.

Same scenario, if you have AA UTG and push-in and then lose the hand, was the math in error? Computing the EV of a particular situation (the math) and the result of the hand are two different things.

[DonkeyKong]

That is not what I said. The math is not in error.

In the pre-flop scenario, admittedly the math is extremely important. But EV is only an estimate. It is what it is. But this estimate can have low error associated with it or high error associated with it. If your assumptions are correct, your 'EV model' is good. If your assumptions are not correct, ie others play unpredictably, your 'EV model' is not good. There is no such thing as a 'useful/objective EV model' or else reading people would not matter and the NLHE tournament champions would all be dominated by mathmeticians.

Because you do not know how others are going to play -- all you can do is assume that they will do X if they have Y or they will not do X if they have Y.

Again, the math can be spot on or it might not.