The Madness of Strangers
Jun. 11th, 2006 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksOK, so it's WSOP madness time approaching again. I am bombarded with promotions about "win a WSOP seat for $3" and the like. I ignore them all.
And yet many players, many good players, seem incapable of so doing. At least doubleas (http://doubleas.blogspot.com/) questions why he acts the way that he does, but that doesn's stop him doing it:
Do I really want to spend $12K equity on the main event? Not sure. If I make it to day 5, the answer will be yes :-). Logically, it doesn’t really make sense to play that tournament as the $10K buy-in is too substantial for my bankroll (and it is for 99% of the players there). Illogically, I have an underlying pride issue that I want to play in the main event.
The respondents to this post seem to have a similar attitude. Smokkee wrote:
Qualifiers makes perfect sense. being the degenerate i am, i continue to bang my head against the wall.
gaamblor posted: what would make you happier, to be prahlad or to be greg raymer? sure the main event is over most everyones bankroll but its a once a year chance to get a taste of 40+ million dollars in dead money
which is, of course, a nonsense attitude. It's not the amount of "dead money" that's available (and remember, a lot of that dead money actually walks away with a profit) but the expected value of that dead money to you. There may be a significantly large number of players worse than you in the tournament, but there are quite a few players who are better.
In other words, as far as I can see, the whole package entails spending more than a week in a hellhole, being herded like a passenger on an arplane, paying $10K for the privilege, losing god knows how much in expected return from your ordinary cash game, for an EV of, what? $16K? (And that's optimistic).
+++++
A few of the high level players have been struggling the past couple of months -- tending to break even rather than win. Some have "crashed and burned" and aren't posting at all. Others have lost that sheen of self-confidence that we old fools read with a wry chuckle last year.
Roswell (http://roswell-42.livejournal.com/) in particular seems in the pits of "damaged goods" despair. No longer does the game seem so easy and he posted the following:
Before this bad run, my accomplishments in poker were really nothing special. Last year I had three $10K cashes in tournaments and won a satellite into the main event. This year I've won satellites into the $5K event at Reno, and the $10K event at Commerce. I think this shows I am at least semi-talented. However, I didn't make the money in any of those big-buyin events, so what does it matter? So many people have been playing for a much shorter period of time than me, and made much more money. Five years is a long time to play without making any serious money. Maybe I'm just not that good.
A few of us wondered at the Roswell metagame, with what seemed like random interspersals of cash and tournaments and a general feeling of "this is a great ride!" without much overall strategy. (And, of course, I've been playing, on and off, for over 30 years without making any serious money :-) )
Then again, even in the pits, he maintains some kind of sense of humour:
Right now I just feel totally disgusted about poker. I think I’m going to shift all my energies to winning a second WSOP entry on Stars. That would be a boost to my morale and bankroll. If I can't pull it off I might have to... get a job?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The problem here is that I see it in a large number of cash players who hit a bad run. Rather than shift down in stakes or focus on why they have been in a bad run, they move to tournaments because there is a built-in stop loss for the tournament. The mathematical downside to this is that the chance of you getting a "big score" to boost the morale and bankroll is less than 50% -- often quite a lot less than 50%.
Is a move over to tournaments a good move for the dispirited cash player?
That's a real poser. If you are a losing player overall, perhaps the answer is, yes. You will still lose money, probably at a slightly slower rate, and you might get lucky and make a big score.
But if you have the potential to be a winning cash player, it could be the worse thing for you to do. As doubleas noted, tournament games can mess up your cash play. People moan that tournaments are taking money away from the cash game, but I don't think that this is true. People with a tournament score often sit down in cash games, and then they play as if it's a tournament. And, of course, they do their money, utterly bemused that the fold equity that they had as the bubble approached in a tournament has vanished in a swirl of dirty bathwater, with their chips making that glug-glug sound as the last of the water disappears down the plughole.
I think that it's much harder to shift betwixt cash and tournament games than people think, and to shift to tournaments because of a bad run in cash can, in the long run, make it much harder to get back on track.
Roswell looks at the people who have been playing a much shorter time than him, but who have made much more money. But what about the players who had been playing a much shorter time, who had gone broke? Why worry about the guy (like, say, Gavin Smith) who happens to be good, but also to be on a roll? Why, indeed, shoot for the moon?
"Bill Ivey" (http://bill-ivey.blogspot.com) (Lee Gaines, a young kid who wins at cash) seems to be able to shift from cash to tournies, but he admits that he is mainly a cash player (although, curiously, his criticism of himself is after a push with JT that looks like a standard tournament play to me -- was he just annoyed because, as I seem to do, he walked into a big hand behind?).
So, this money can be won, at cash. If you want to enter $10K tournaments, just win the cash and pony it up. But (and here is I think the defining point), if you say to yourself "oh, well, obviously I wouldn't pay a cash entry fee for the the WSOP, I just want to see if I win a satellite", then you shouldn't be playing in the WSOP anyway. Whether you win a satellite or you pay cash, the counterparty still receives $10,000 from you. If they get $10K, then, by definition, you are paying $10K.
++++++++
It's been a slightly depressing month in one way, but a rewarding one in another. I'm at just about break-even (negative by a couple of hundred if we eliminate bonuses), but there are three factors contributing to this:
1) I'm running slightly bad at Party (minus 0.64 big bets per 100 over 7,000 hands)
2) I've had two bad sessions out of three at the $5-$10 on Virgin against what could best be described as "fun players"
3) I've been four-tabling at Party, aiming to chalk up 20,000 hands a month. As such, I expected my win rate to fall, although it would have been nice if it hadn't fallen into the red. I switched back to three-tabling this morning and may resume the 20K hands a month four-tabling challenge at the beginning of July. In terms of R&D, I think that it has been worthwhile. I've learnt a few things.
Now, the Sunday Papers beckon.
And yet many players, many good players, seem incapable of so doing. At least doubleas (http://doubleas.blogspot.com/) questions why he acts the way that he does, but that doesn's stop him doing it:
Do I really want to spend $12K equity on the main event? Not sure. If I make it to day 5, the answer will be yes :-). Logically, it doesn’t really make sense to play that tournament as the $10K buy-in is too substantial for my bankroll (and it is for 99% of the players there). Illogically, I have an underlying pride issue that I want to play in the main event.
The respondents to this post seem to have a similar attitude. Smokkee wrote:
Qualifiers makes perfect sense. being the degenerate i am, i continue to bang my head against the wall.
gaamblor posted: what would make you happier, to be prahlad or to be greg raymer? sure the main event is over most everyones bankroll but its a once a year chance to get a taste of 40+ million dollars in dead money
which is, of course, a nonsense attitude. It's not the amount of "dead money" that's available (and remember, a lot of that dead money actually walks away with a profit) but the expected value of that dead money to you. There may be a significantly large number of players worse than you in the tournament, but there are quite a few players who are better.
In other words, as far as I can see, the whole package entails spending more than a week in a hellhole, being herded like a passenger on an arplane, paying $10K for the privilege, losing god knows how much in expected return from your ordinary cash game, for an EV of, what? $16K? (And that's optimistic).
+++++
A few of the high level players have been struggling the past couple of months -- tending to break even rather than win. Some have "crashed and burned" and aren't posting at all. Others have lost that sheen of self-confidence that we old fools read with a wry chuckle last year.
Roswell (http://roswell-42.livejournal.com/) in particular seems in the pits of "damaged goods" despair. No longer does the game seem so easy and he posted the following:
Before this bad run, my accomplishments in poker were really nothing special. Last year I had three $10K cashes in tournaments and won a satellite into the main event. This year I've won satellites into the $5K event at Reno, and the $10K event at Commerce. I think this shows I am at least semi-talented. However, I didn't make the money in any of those big-buyin events, so what does it matter? So many people have been playing for a much shorter period of time than me, and made much more money. Five years is a long time to play without making any serious money. Maybe I'm just not that good.
A few of us wondered at the Roswell metagame, with what seemed like random interspersals of cash and tournaments and a general feeling of "this is a great ride!" without much overall strategy. (And, of course, I've been playing, on and off, for over 30 years without making any serious money :-) )
Then again, even in the pits, he maintains some kind of sense of humour:
Right now I just feel totally disgusted about poker. I think I’m going to shift all my energies to winning a second WSOP entry on Stars. That would be a boost to my morale and bankroll. If I can't pull it off I might have to... get a job?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The problem here is that I see it in a large number of cash players who hit a bad run. Rather than shift down in stakes or focus on why they have been in a bad run, they move to tournaments because there is a built-in stop loss for the tournament. The mathematical downside to this is that the chance of you getting a "big score" to boost the morale and bankroll is less than 50% -- often quite a lot less than 50%.
Is a move over to tournaments a good move for the dispirited cash player?
That's a real poser. If you are a losing player overall, perhaps the answer is, yes. You will still lose money, probably at a slightly slower rate, and you might get lucky and make a big score.
But if you have the potential to be a winning cash player, it could be the worse thing for you to do. As doubleas noted, tournament games can mess up your cash play. People moan that tournaments are taking money away from the cash game, but I don't think that this is true. People with a tournament score often sit down in cash games, and then they play as if it's a tournament. And, of course, they do their money, utterly bemused that the fold equity that they had as the bubble approached in a tournament has vanished in a swirl of dirty bathwater, with their chips making that glug-glug sound as the last of the water disappears down the plughole.
I think that it's much harder to shift betwixt cash and tournament games than people think, and to shift to tournaments because of a bad run in cash can, in the long run, make it much harder to get back on track.
Roswell looks at the people who have been playing a much shorter time than him, but who have made much more money. But what about the players who had been playing a much shorter time, who had gone broke? Why worry about the guy (like, say, Gavin Smith) who happens to be good, but also to be on a roll? Why, indeed, shoot for the moon?
"Bill Ivey" (http://bill-ivey.blogspot.com) (Lee Gaines, a young kid who wins at cash) seems to be able to shift from cash to tournies, but he admits that he is mainly a cash player (although, curiously, his criticism of himself is after a push with JT that looks like a standard tournament play to me -- was he just annoyed because, as I seem to do, he walked into a big hand behind?).
So, this money can be won, at cash. If you want to enter $10K tournaments, just win the cash and pony it up. But (and here is I think the defining point), if you say to yourself "oh, well, obviously I wouldn't pay a cash entry fee for the the WSOP, I just want to see if I win a satellite", then you shouldn't be playing in the WSOP anyway. Whether you win a satellite or you pay cash, the counterparty still receives $10,000 from you. If they get $10K, then, by definition, you are paying $10K.
++++++++
It's been a slightly depressing month in one way, but a rewarding one in another. I'm at just about break-even (negative by a couple of hundred if we eliminate bonuses), but there are three factors contributing to this:
1) I'm running slightly bad at Party (minus 0.64 big bets per 100 over 7,000 hands)
2) I've had two bad sessions out of three at the $5-$10 on Virgin against what could best be described as "fun players"
3) I've been four-tabling at Party, aiming to chalk up 20,000 hands a month. As such, I expected my win rate to fall, although it would have been nice if it hadn't fallen into the red. I switched back to three-tabling this morning and may resume the 20K hands a month four-tabling challenge at the beginning of July. In terms of R&D, I think that it has been worthwhile. I've learnt a few things.
Now, the Sunday Papers beckon.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-11 02:56 pm (UTC)Still, early doors, one long session, etc
Mike
no subject
Date: 2006-06-11 03:57 pm (UTC)It's a massive generalization, but I've often felt that a large proportion of your profit at the Big Bet game is other people making stupid mistakes and calling you when they shouldn't. "Clever" plays (and "good calls") contribute a minuscule amount of your overall profit.
Then again, the same (kind of) applies in Limit, except that here it's a small mistake being repeated lots of times, rather than a big mistake being made once.
This is one of the reasons that I like Limit. I make "big" mistakes quite often. Luckily, I don't make lots of small mistakes. And a big mistake in Limit doesn't demolish your stack. Obviously you would rather not make them, but it isn't the be-all and end-all of your win rate.
in a sense I should know this better than most, because as a youngster I played pot limit and made nearly all of my profit by being called when I had the goods. That was it. Winning money from bad players who couldn't put a hand down, even though they had a bad feeling about calling. Not, as they say in the trade, rocket science.
So, why not do it now? well, frankly, the lack of value to the money makes it more likely that I would be the caller rather than the bettor (who would be some young student doing what I did 30 years ago, to whom the money means a lot more). If I was to get up to levels where the money meant the same amount to me now as it did then, then the quality of opponent would be such that I would be unlikely to find easy pickings.
So, I stick to limit, wher ethe whole mathematical caboodle is rather different.
So, just remember, don't call.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-06-11 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-11 05:03 pm (UTC)And, I regret to say, I am a writer. A genuine, down-the-line, hack. This means that I get paid far less than the likes of Stephen King, but far more than 99.999% of "writers". I'm not even a freelance. I actually get paid a monthly stipend to crank out stuff on the computer.
One day I'll write about what it's like to be a writer. Or, maybe I won't. I think that it's a theme that has been done to death.
If you want to know who the "writer's writer" is, then there is only one competitor. Dr Pauly uses him as an avatar (and, by the way, Pauly, I have an original Ralph Steadman on my wall, as well as having got drunk with him in a pub some 25 years ago) and I have read all of the man's stuff at least twice each. I refer, of course, to Hunter S Thompson.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-06-11 05:42 pm (UTC)Yeah, I know. Sorry, I forgot the smiley face at the end of that line :)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-11 06:20 pm (UTC)(a) $125,000 from the table in a cash game
or
(b) $90,000 plus a bracelet, because it's the final table of one of the smaller WSoP tournaments.
Which would you prefer? Do you think anyone who prefers (b) to (a) is outright wrong in their utility function? Would you go so far as to say that the one true utility function is linear with cash won and lost - and when you encounter someone else whose utility function differs from that, you are happy to move to a situation where you both become more happy by virtue of you taking their money?
There are all sorts of other similar questions that apply, not least what the utility is of not just winning a $10k buy-in but winning a package that includes a $10k buy-in, transportation, hotel (and also involves the disutility conceding clothing / image rights). I also guess that another recent post of yours could be explained by people deriving massive utility from beating P. Hellmuth Jr. Esq. regardless of the sum of money involved.
Personally, I maximise my utility by being the dealer.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-11 11:28 pm (UTC)Well, yes. For a while, before I learned to play boring, that was me. Of course, I got to suck out on occasion, probably before the expression was coined. I have fond memories of you sitting there muttering "how could you call that..."
I think you're largely right about low-stakes big bet games. I see occasional instances where I have literally no idea why the other gu called. I think I'm pretty transparent with my betting and often feel like I'm giving my hand away, but there are still plenty who will come along when I do hit. Perhaps they think I'm being "tricky".
I've had occasional bouts of Fancy Play Syndrome but I suspect that (a) most of the players I mix it with aren't up to inferring the representation or (b) I'm not up to playing it properly. Or both.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 05:08 am (UTC)Well, yes, this is the point of my post, that a player's utility function is not linearly correlated with cash. It all comes back to why people play poker compared to why they think they play poker.
So, someone who prefers the $90K plus a bracelet is not wrong in their utility function. But they might be wrong in thinking what their utility function actually is. In other words, they might be playing for different reasons from those in the conscious part of their brain.
Most players, however, never even ask that question.
Online, two obvious non-cash utility functions appear time and time again.
a) a desperate need to be seen as a "good" player, even though this can have a negative cash utility (the "I'm not a fish! He is! line), and
b) a desperate need to psychologically destroy the opposition, even though this also can have a negative cash utility (the "I own you" line).
Time and again I'll see justifications for various variations of these deep psychological needs ("I like to put my opponent on tilt", "I like to get mess with their heads", etc) when the bottom line is in the player's own psyche, not the opponent's.
If you do not understand what your own utility from the game actually is, then it can be rather hard to know how to go about maximising it.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 08:13 pm (UTC)For example, I won my seat in a Stars $160+10 double shootout. The rake for a $160 tournament would usually be $12, not $10. I was able to buy in with W$, which trade at about US$0.90. $11000 was removed from the prize pool, but the WSOP package is worth $12000 if you're willing to wear Stars gear. Basically, by being willing to take winnings partially in the form of a seat rather than in cash, I'm getting an immediate overlay of nearly 20%.
In addition, satellites have an extremely top-heavy prize structure, which strongly favors a winning player - if I'd have a 25% edge in a tournament with a standard structure, that edge is over 50% when winner-takes-almost-all. Combine that with the above-mentioned overlay and I'm getting perhaps triple my usual winrate. Hard to resist.
Of course the downside is having to play a tournament far larger than is sensible for my bankroll, and having to pay the expenses and opportunity cost of being there. I've sold half my action at a premium already, and plan to sell or trade another 15% or so - a $3500 tournament is still too large for me, but isn't completely absurd. It's more likely than not that I'll be there only two days, and if I'm there much longer I won't be complaining, so the expenses seem reasonable.
On the whole it seems like a good value proposition, or at least not so awful that it's not worth doing once for the experience.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 07:14 am (UTC)Online it's tougher, because you get multitablers and many other things. Moans in the chat box can help, but as a rule you have to go for different "tells" to indicate whether a person is in tight or loose mode.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 07:17 am (UTC)Selling some of your action is an option that didn't immediately occur to me, I'll admit, partly because if I did this then I would feel under more pressure, not less, to "get into the money" as the bubble approached. I've always seen poker as the ultimate individualistic game, so selling part of my action would never have occurred to me.
More on the other points later.
PJ