Luck-free Poker

[Rotating Rabbit]

As we all know, tournament poker, especially NL, is a lot of luck. You maximise your chances, but on a tournament by tournament basis its luck whether you dodge the bullets, espcially in a large field.

But check this for a concept:

We have 100 players in the tourney. 10 tables of 10, chosen randomly as usual, with the tables in different rooms. But here's the catch :

Every table plays the same hands at the same time, ie in a hand all the hole cards are the same for all ten tables; the person in seat 1 on table A gets the same hole cards as the person in seat 1 on all the other tables. Then the community cards are also the same. (All the hands and community cards are entirely random, dealt and recorded pre-event, then replicated over 10 tables). After a fifth of the tournament time is over, we stop playing and look at how the players did:

Each player is effectively only up against the 9 players who got exactly the same cards as him /saw the same flops as him/vs the same holdings; i.e. whoever plays their cards the best (given that they could be great or awful) goes through to the next round. This means that the luck of your cards is no longer there. You could get dealt a whole string of rags for 2 hours and come top of your group because they lost more on them than you did, or you could get AA twenty times in a row, dominate your table, and get eliminated because the others getting AA twenty times all won more than you did. Or you could suffer a horrible bad beat losing all your chips to some 1-outer river, as did most of your counterparts in the same situation, but up till then you had played hands marginally better and had a higher chip count than they did at the point of getting beaten, so you go through to the next round!

We take the best 8 players in each group and make 8 tables of 10, then repeat the process.

Final table as normal.

This way, the best players would probably get to the final table. The luck would be who you were drawn against in your group, and the way your opponents play on the tables, so its not entirely luck free, but its lot closer to a skill-tournament than the current structure, in my opinion.

Thoughts?

Edit: It would also make very good tv. You perhaps could see three world class players, each with their own different style of playing a tough hand, perhaps facing a huge bet on the river and seeing how they all react.

[spentrent]

Poker is PERFECT already. Poor play is rewarded EXACTLY often enough to keep the donaters donating and the sharks sharking.

What tournament pro needs to get into a pissing contest over who gets the most value with marginal hands? There's already a game that measures this ability; it's called "limit poker."

In your "tournament" you're assuming that that the texture of every table is exactly the same and that every player who plays poorly plays poorly in exactly the same way.

It seems like you want to be rewarded for entering pots as a favorite without getting caught up in the emotion of losing to a suckout.

Grow up. Play chess if the dark side of probability scares you.

[Rotating Rabbit]

OK. I'm not sure you've understood my post.

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Poker is PERFECT already. Poor play is rewarded EXACTLY often enough to keep the donaters donating and the sharks sharking.

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No difference! Its the same game, that hasnt changed! If someone plays poor but gets lucky, theyll stay in and be doing well! No different.

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What tournament pro needs to get into a pissing contest over who gets the most value with marginal hands? There's already a game that measures this ability; it's called "limit poker."

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Most likely the two that come bottom of the group played one or two hands very poorly for a lot of chips, e.g. called the nut flush on the river when the other 8 folded. It wont come down to marginal differences in most cases.

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In your "tournament" you're assuming that that the texture of every table is exactly the same and that every player who plays poorly plays poorly in exactly the same way.


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No I'm not. I actually said this in my post.

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It seems like you want to be rewarded for entering pots as a favorite without getting caught up in the emotion of losing to a suckout.


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Absolutaly not. It makes the game more competitive, thats the motivation.

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Grow up. Play chess if the dark side of probability scares you.

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No comment.

[hummusx]

This would all break down when someone was eliminated, wouldn't it?

[spentrent]

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OK. I'm not sure you've understood my post.

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You're correct. I'm too closed-minded to read into a "take the luck out of poker" post. I've read it again and I've decided that it's an interesting game but it's not poker.

You should instead create an essay test with situations and questions, grade it, and give the prize money to the person with the best grade. Won't that person be the one who wins your tournament, essentially?

[The_Bends]

I think this would invite more bitching than normal tournament poker.

'When I got to my Aces Adam managed to lay down his Jacks but Steve had the Jacks on Martins table and theres no way that crazy fool was going to lay them down so Martin beat me. There was nothing I could do it was just bad luck.'

That sort of thing. I like the idea though it would be a nice change of pace.

[meow_meow]

A major problem here is that your result is dependant on how your opponents play their hands.
For example, you may play perfectly and get suckout out by a terrible call, where on the same hand at another table your doppleganger makes the same play and his villain folds. Same play, different result....

[Paul2432]

This idea is not new. Duplicate bridge tournaments use this format every day. On RGP there has been extensive discussion of the idea. A Google RGP search on Duplicate Poker gave over 600 hits.

One person tried to implement an duplicate poker event at the WSOP but was not able to do it despite a huge effort.

FWIW, I think one problem with the format is that it could lead to some very unusual strategy adjustments. For example, suppose you are on the last hand and have been dealt AA. Further suppose you know you have made some mistakes and strongly suspect you are behind your competition at the other tables. The correct play is to fold, and hope AA gets cracked. If you make the standard play you have no hope of gaining any ground on the competition.

In the bridge world, this type of problem is somewhat mitigated by using alternate scoring methods such as IMPs and matchpoints.

I agree with your main point though. I think this type of event would be very interesting.

Paul

[exeph]

The main problem of trying to introduce the duplicate bridge playing pattern to poker is that people bust out in poker. When tables don't have the same number of people, the "same hands" thing breaks down.

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
The main problem of trying to introduce the duplicate bridge playing pattern to poker is that people bust out in poker. When tables don't have the same number of people, the "same hands" thing breaks down.

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No this is a real easy fix...you just keep dealing out 10 hands even after people bust out. Just the ones to empty chairs are auto-mucked.