Time to Give Poker Superstars 2 Another Chance?

[Trebor the Mad Overlord]

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If you're supposed to fold the nuts in order to progress, I have to confess, I'm not a huge fan.

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I agree that the PS2 playoff format is flawed, but what I found interesting is that none of the players in last night's episode played anywhere near optimal strategy given what they needed to do to progress.

For example, anytime Carlos or Dewey found themselves HTH with Todd, if Todd has more chips than they do, they could have taken the pot by pushing; Todd cannot call, because if he wins, he loses.

Seems to me that they more or less decided that it would be lame to do stuff like that, so they just "played poker".

Thinking through the game theory is quite interesting. It's sort of a 4-way prisoner's dilemma. It will be interesting to see if any of the other playoff groupings are ruthless about exploiting the quirks of the format.

[Easy E]

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At that point, they're not playing good poker because they're not playing poker. I don't have a problem with that, but if you want to see good poker it could be an issue for you just like it was for Mike Sexton. If you're supposed to fold the nuts in order to progress, I have to confess, I'm not a huge fan.

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So, I guess that folding Aces before the flop, on the bubble, after 3 others have gone all-in wouldn't be a "poker" decision to you either? If you don't like that, how about Broadway on the flop, with two flush cards, in the same situation?

I agree that it isn't the ideal format in my mind either, but I don't think you can state that it isn't poker. It's just poker with an unusual (and less than desireable) twist.

[Dynasty]

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So, I guess that folding Aces before the flop, on the bubble, after 3 others have gone all-in wouldn't be a "poker" decision to you either? .

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That is definitely not a poker decision. It's a tournament decision.

Both are good examples of how tournment poker is a bastardized version of the game. The PSII show was simply much more extreme.

[Dynasty]

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I'm not really clear why 4 handed play would be so much better than 6 handed play. What are you hoping to see here?

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In the first half hour of the show, it worked out as I had hoped. There were a good # of hands shown with no all-ins except when Mortensen re-reraised all-in with AQo against Grey'a TT.

I thought the first half of the show was good. In the second half, the large blinds kicked in and we again saw too many Q8o's pushing all-in and getting called by A5o's.

This playoff round was better than what we've seen before.

[whiskeytown]

for some reason, I have this strange dislike of a final round with it just heads up -

I sorta want my final tables to be 6 or 9 handed, ya know....

RB

[Walter Pullis]

Frankly, 4 handed will simply produce more all-ins with everyone else folding pre-flop or "first bet wins" post-flop. There is nothing much else you can do 4 handed with wired 9's for example.

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Frankly, 4 handed will simply produce more all-ins with everyone else folding pre-flop or "first bet wins" post-flop. There is nothing much else you can do 4 handed with wired 9's for example.

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Then it won't be much different than 90% of ESPN's poker coverage. It's not the WPT, but I'll take what I can get.

[Easy E]

Dynasty, I'm still not sure that the blinds don't progress too quickly to make this a good tournament structure.

But I was impressed with Carlos straightening his game out midstream after wrecking his stack.

And what the hell is Brunson doing- trying to be the Poker Rapunzel?

Does anyone remember- do the 4 players bring the same chips to Match #2 of their playoff, or are the stacks adjusted for their results in Match #1 in the "Sweet Sixteen" as they're calling it?

[Dynasty]

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Does anyone remember- do the 4 players bring the same chips to Match #2 of their playoff, or are the stacks adjusted for their results in Match #1 in the "Sweet Sixteen" as they're calling it?

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At the end of the show, they said the players will start Match #2 with the same chip counts that they started Match #1 with. So, Mortensen again will be the big stack on Hand #1.

[SoftcoreRevolt]

I must say, the two playoff episodes have been very entertaining to watch. Not the best "poker" but certaintly more watchable than a 9 handed hour long broadcast on ESPN where the first 6 hands are people busting.