Pokerstars TLB Points

[Poker Jon]

Hi All,

Just been looking at the Stars TLB points this evening and seen that SDouble is already up to near the 5000 point mark.

Bearing in mind that last year I think Riverloser won the title with about 20,000 points, what do you think the winner will be around this year?

I reckon we could easily be looking at 50,000 points, as online poker seems to have taken off.




What do you guys/gals think?

Jon

[cferejohn]

Eh. I don't find this question that interesting. I wish they had a point keeping system that rated how well players did per tournament (though I guess their whole point here is to get people to play more). Well, I guess they do, it's called "bankroll". Evidently it can be exchanged for goods and services. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Anyway, it's not public. The TLB winners mostly just show you who is playing in every freaking tournament and doing at least reasonably well. I haven't played with sdouble that I can remember, but I do remember there was a TLB leader a while go named Alex with a pic of a pirate. I was unimpressed with his play, at best. Premier, Exclusive, and Donkey all seem to be solid players who are among the leaders though.

I just don't play enough to have any kind of chance (though I wsa 8th for this week last time I looked [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img])

[Poker Jon]

cfere,

I completely agree with your point that just because someone is top of the leaderboard on Stars doesn't mean they are a good player.

However, what it does show is that they must still do consistently well. It is still difficult to win a 500 player tournament either live or online, but there are players who consistently make the final tables of these tournaments - they must be doing something right.

I reckon you can be near the top of the leader board and be a losing player, but I think that these are few and far between because:

1) You would have to be a complete idiot with lots of time even more money and a pretty sad life to keep plowing your money into $50, $200 and $500 tourneys to maybe finish in the money a few select times

2) People who dedicate that amount of time into online poker must have/should have an inkling of how to play the game

3) The TLB favours people who can play in a lot of the multi-table tourneys. Normally the idiots seem to migrate towards the cash game tables as they can't correlate tourney chips to money - they would rather lose their $50 in a cash game where they can see their money directly in front of them, instead of T10,000 etc

I think I am generalising a huge amount with these statements, but they are my thoughts!

Jon

[M.B.E.]

I noticed your name there, cferejohn. How did you get your 726.87 points? (You're tenth now for the week -- win a few tourneys by Saturday and you could play Tom McEvoy.)

I agree more or less with Poker Jon that players who do well on the TLB list must be doing something right.

Has anyone analysed the formula PokerStars uses to calculate TLB points? It seems kind of complicated. One thing I've noticed is that first place gets a whole lot more points than second, but when it gets down a few places there is only a point or two separating adjacent spots. It's unclear to me what the mathematical relationship is between the tourney buyin and how many TLB points are awarded. I've been thinking of posting this question in the Probability forum, where the math geeks hang out. (No offence intended, in case any of them reads this.)

[cferejohn]

Won a $20 NL and a $100 PL tournment this week. I'll be posting a report of the $100 one soon, if you are interested. I'll be trying to enter a couple more before the end of the week, but I'm pretty busy these days. What is considered "the end of the week" for these purposes anyway?

[Rob Blackburn]

I am still of the opinion that the TLB leaders are the guys simply playing the most tourneys not the ones placing consistently the best overall. I'm not saying that these players are not good, most of your regulars are very good, but nobody can compete with a guy who is playing 8-10 tourneys a day(if not more with some of these guys) and getting some kind of points for every tourney. I think a better way is to some how incoporate money/high finish vs. total amount attempted in some way.

[kingstalker]

I was watching one player today "Riverloser", he was playing four at one time!

[curmudgeon]

Luckily for us PS gives us the formula and even an Excel spreadsheet to play with....

The logarithmic formula for buyins works like this:
<font color="blue">
buyin = multiply result by
FREEROLL = 0.4
$1 = 1.1
$10 = 2
$20 = 2.3
$30 = 2.48
$50 = 2.7
$100 = 3
$200 = 3.3
$500 = 3.7
$1000 = 4
</font>
Logarithms give us ORDERS of MAGNITUDE, like the Richter Scale for earthquakes. For the TLB 10=2, 100=3, 1000=4
(all numbers have been rounded)

Long ago, in place far far away, I was a math wiz who consistently scored in the 99percentile on all math tests.
But now I am older, I just used the spreadsheet! Anyone can do it!! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

The other part of the formula is basically the NUMBER of PLAYERS divided by FINISH POSITION........ its really that simple. (Disregard the square roots and multiplication by 10. They just massage the number into a certain range.)

Thanks for the question........ this was fun! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[M.B.E.]

[ QUOTE ]
Won a $20 NL and a $100 PL tournment this week. I'll be posting a report of the $100 one soon, if you are interested.

[/ QUOTE ]
Congratulations. And yes, please.

[curmudgeon]

It seems that low buy-in tourneys with many players offer some TLB point value, especially for the top spots.

For example, there are currently 4 Holdem tourneys on PS.

$3 tourney with 1400 players: 1st gets 565 TLB points
$10 tourney with 700 players: 1st gets 532 TLB points
$50 tourney with 250 players: 1st gets 427 TLB points
$100 tourney with 63 players: 1st gets 238 TLB points

a Freeroll with 5000 players: 1st gets 281 TLB points

Note that TLB points for the player who goes out lower down, but in the top 10% or 15%, are actually higher for the higher buyins, despite the lower number of players. (Yes, that means, players with more money are BUYing more points.)
So the value for low buy-in tourneys is in the top finish positions.

Just to recap: the basic formula is........
(NUMBER of PLAYERS/FINISH POSITION) * Buy-in amount

All of that other stuff in the formula [square, root, and log] is just jiggery-pokery. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

By the by..... I believe PartyPoker uses the same formula.