Matt Matros article in Cardplayer about coinflips

[JustPlayingSmart]

[ QUOTE ]
i read the article and it made alot of sense i have to say.
just one thing that i dont understand.
how come when talking about coin flip situation he only says earlt in the tourny.the argument and tha calculations that were made,seem to be good at any stage of the tourny and not just the earlt stages.

[/ QUOTE ]

He only is talking about early in the tourney because that is the time when some people say you should pass up small edges because you can get bigger edges later. They think that with small blinds, they can increase their stack without risking all of their chips. Most people agree that when the blinds get higher, you have to take any edge you can get.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Proof:

One possible flaw here is that if you do play the queens and now it's a little later and you have that $22,000 and the opportunity presents itself to double up again, you probably can't do it even if you wanted to since your opponent is most likely to have less than you.

In the initial example with the queens, since it's the first hand your opponent has the chips so that you can get all in. But I don't think that will usually be the case shortly after you have doubled up.

Best wishes,
Mason

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Spee:

[ QUOTE ]
Who in their right mind considers open pushing all in preflop as playing poker? Pre-flop open push is a betting strategy, not a poker strategy. Out-thinking and out-playing opponents on the flop, turn and river is playing poker. IMHO, there is a difference.


[/ QUOTE ]

You're absolutely right, but so what. One of the criticisms that top side game players have of tournaments is precisely what you say. That is it's a betting exercise as opposed to a poker exercise.

Now while this is certainly an oversimplification, it's also somewhat true, especially late in the tournament where the Ms (see Harrington: Volume II) are low.

However, that's the way it is, and that's why the Matros article is interesting. He's essentially asking the question: When do I quit playing poker and just concentrate on the betting?

Best wishes,
Mason

[triplc]

First of all, awesome thread. If nothing else it has given us some real meat to chew on for a change. In fact, it brought me out of posting retirement (which some I'm sure will regret).

One point that no one (I apologize if I'm repeating anyone, as I've skimmed some parts of the thread) has addressed is the value those extra chips have in giving you the ability to push small edges effectively later in the tournament.

Let's say you fold a 55-45 in the first hand as the example states. Then you hit a bad run of cards, get picked off on a bluff, or some other scenario that drains your chips to 5000 and you are the short stack at the table.

Now, suppose this exact same situation presents itself not once, but twice (hey, if we're going to use hypotheticals, why not go crazy).

Now I'm 55% to win the first one to get back to 10k and 55% again to win the second and get to the 20k I could've been at on the first hand. But now, I only have a (.55 x .55) 29.75 chance of being where I would've been at 55% in the first hand.

Also, with the biggest stack, I am going to be more comfortable pushing small edges because my chance of being busted on a given hand is zero. I want to be the guy with 55 putting a decent sized stack to a decision for all of his chips.

I am not a multi tourney expert by any means, in fact I consider myself a fair mtt player (more experience in SnGs or ring games). And I think this article helped me discover why. I am a very tight player, especially early, and I am usually frustrated by getting bounced in the middle rounds as a favorite by a big stack who pushed either a small disadvantage or sometimes sucks out as a big underdog. Or, I am forced to push with marginal hands as my stack dwindles to lt 10XBB.

Finally, am I missing the point when Matt says keep track of the number of times you've doubled up in a tourney. Is he counting the times he got drained to 1k in chips and double to 2k, or is he counting the number of times he accumulated double the starting chips. That's a big difference.

OK...fire away.

CCC

[Proofrock]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi Proof:

One possible flaw here is that if you do play the queens and now it's a little later and you have that $22,000 and the opportunity presents itself to double up again, you probably can't do it even if you wanted to since your opponent is most likely to have less than you.

In the initial example with the queens, since it's the first hand your opponent has the chips so that you can get all in. But I don't think that will usually be the case shortly after you have doubled up.

Best wishes,
Mason

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure I was clear in my original post. Let's say you chose to fold the first hand. Matros assumes that you then sit with t10000 until you double up at time T. However, if you had doubled up, the assumption is that your stack will have grown to t22000 at time T. Now, if you have twice the stack of anybody else at the table, the extra t10000 are of no use as far as cEV is concerned, so I can only assume that whatever you had done to accumulate the extra 2000 chips by time T you would have been able to do with a t10000 stack. So I then proposed that it would make more sense to assume that you would have t12,000 at time T if you folded QQ on the first hand. So then, using Matros's own argument, "you can answer that by solving this equation: " x(24,000) = (.538)(22,000). By Matros' argument, this implies that you can pass up QQ the first hand, then get all-in as a dog (49.3% to win) at time T to equal the expecation from calling the first hand.

Thanks to your post, however, I've revisited this and have since come to believe that Matros's attempt to use this argument to support his claim is logically flawed: it assumes that there would be a situation where you would double up with a t10000 stack whereas you would fold preflop with the t22000 stack -- otherwise the comparison of what happens at time T via the equation x(20000)=(0.538)(22000) makes no sense.

Thankfully, though, the original article doesn't rest entirely on the shoulders of this argument.

-J.A.