"Look, there's Bill Hellmuth"

[peterbirks]

The above was a quote from one of the tourists (in the technical sense -- the guy had probably never held a card in anger) at this year's WSOP. I was of course reminded of the tourist at the Bellagio tournament last december, moaning that the press wouldn't let him see Doyle Brunson at the table. "But we're the ones who watch him on television!" he wailed, as if this conferred some rights of ownership.

So, poor Bill Hellmuth, just inches away from that 10th bracelet, rivered by a flush. The final hand is on Pokerwire. Cabanillas had 5-3 of diamonds, Hellmuth had 5h 4s, and the board is 6d 4d 3h and all the money went in (well, Hellmuth was quite badly outchipped, but that's by the by). Quickly now, who is favourite?

I'm not bad at these things, but I got this one wrong. I thought that Hellmuth would be something like 52/48. In fact it was the other way round.

Hellmuth hits trip fours on the turn, making him 3-to-1 favourit, and then Cabanillas hits the Jack of diamonds on the river to win it. Sweet.

As Phil said last year, "no-one remembers who came second".

"Hey, Bill, over here. Can I have your autograph, Bill?"

++++++++++++++

(Later):

I have come to the conclusion that at tournaments, I simply suck. Got rid of 1,250 points on UB for the PLO. 40 players, 5 paid ($20, $27.50, $40, $60, $100). Six left, for all of whom the money is clearly quite a significant part of their Ultimate Bet bankroll. I am second in chips. Half an hour later I am out in sixth. It doesn't seem to matter if I play aggressively or defensively, I get outplayed when it gets to these situations. Actually, I do better if I play defensively (because at least I get into the money and sometimes I go on to win it). But there were three short stacks, and each of them seemed to rebuild their stack effortlessly through all-ins that worked.

So, Two and a half hours wasted (well, I did do some writing at the same time), for a net return of zero. In fact, worse than zero, because mentally I am now on tilt, so I can't trust myself to sit down in a cash game. I suspect that using up the points to play in tournaments might not be a good idea. Once again, they do my head in. God knows what I would be like if it was for serious money (probably no worse, actually. It's the principle and the time that annoy me, not the money. That's two and a half hours of my life that I can't get back).

So, a simple question. Why do I hate tournaments when most people seem to like them? I don't really enjoy myself when I am playing them, and I certainly don't enjoy myself when I go from a big chip stack to busting out on the bubble. And the half an hour with eight players, then seven, then six, was just horrible. The hourly rate must on the whole be crap. So why, why, do you people put yourself through this hell voluntarily?

I mean, I really want to know. Presumably one factor must be that you don't suck at it, while I do :-)

PJ

Comments

Sucking at Tournaments

[miserable-git.livejournal.com]

Pete,
I'm not sure how bad/good I am at tournies as I play so few. What I do find frustrating is that at key points in a tourney (mostly OH/8) I seem to hit a run of totally crap hands usually married with unrelated flops. On the cash table you just go into your shell, lose a few blinds and wait - in the tourney the blinds escalate and I seem to bleed away as I never guess that my 9842 rainbow was going to hit a flop of 884!
You may just have hit bad cards - it happens.

John

Re: Sucking at Tournaments

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Thinking again, later still:

The cards are irrelevant. I was outplayed, I know that. I think that part of it is the way that I play cards. I need to do things over and over again to get them right. The only solution for me in tournaments is to play lots of tournaments; that's the only way that I learn.

I had lousy cards throughout -- my stack was built up through stealing and through judicious betting (usually from early position when defending the blind) when it looked to me that my opponent had missed the flop or was the kind who would fold something marginal. I won a few big showdowns, but none were sensationally lucky and none were with "the nuts". In other words, my early game and early mid-game were played well, because I've played them a lot. I mastered the early game first, and I've got the hang of the mid-game since (btw, it seems to me that it is this mid-game where you might be struggling a bit, giving up too many hands to the aggressive stealers). Now, when I am approaching the bubble (if I get that far) I usually have at least an average stack.

However, quite clearly when I get to this area, with six to nine players left and five getting paid, I have too little experience. I seriously do suck.

It's different when 10 get paid; in that arena I have quite a bit of experience and I tend to do ok. So, either I should totally avoid tournaments with 20 to 49 players, or I should play one hell of a lot of them.

Mikey noted in one of his posts that in boardgames he would often do well the first few times that it was played, (because he sees an underlying correct strategy faster than other people do) but would then fall back as other players slowly saw what was happening, and then improved on that basic underlying strategy.

I'm a bit like the slowly slowly player there. I have to experience the situations several times before I get a handle on it. But when I do get a handle on it, I'm pretty good at exploiting it.

I really wish that I could switch from game to game. But because it takes me so long to master things, I really have to focus on just one thing for quite a while (say, six weeks) before I get any kind of handle on it at all. Since with tournaments you often don't get to this near-end-game, it could take even longer. So, what is it? Do I continue at limit, not stepping out of my safe little hut? Do I commit myself to tournaments (and probably losing a fair amount of wedge) just to get a handle on the damn things, or do I go over to no limit where, from the writings of Three-bet, that is fast making limit a game of the past in Las Vegas?

I don't know, I really don't know.

But I definitely do suck at these 20-to-49 player tournaments at the moment, and it would be a hard battle to get to the stage where (a) I didn't suck and (b) I enjoyed myself playing them.

PJ

Re: Sucking at Tournaments

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm beating myself up too much about this. Hell, I don't play tournaments, I don't play Pot Limit Omaha, and I was still better than 70% of the field, who were quite clearly dreadful. But, at tourneys, being better than 70% of the field isn't enough.

Part of what throws my (logical) brain out is the prize money disconnect. It goes zero, $20, $27.50, $40, $60.

So the difference from sixth to fifth is the same as from third to second, while the differences from fifth to fourth and fourth to third are less. This mathematical inconsistency irritates me. If the gradation were consistent, I think that I could cope with it better. It's a commo way that the money is distributed in online tournaments of this size, and I can't really work out how to cope with it.

Further, remember the guy who sat out on the bubble in the WSOP? And the point was made that, if that was the way he was going to play it, he shouldn't have entered the tournament?

Well, that's how I feel, and yet when I am on the bubble (and with a decent stack), the metagame effect of me going out with nothing, when there is this disconnect in prize money gradation, is such that I can see how he feels. In other words, even though I know that it is the wrong thing to do, emotionally, it is what I want to do. Now, this kind of internal conflict isn't good for anyone, so, how do you get round it? How do you get what you want to do emotionally in tune with what intellectually and mathematically you know is right?

Answers appreciated.

PJ

Re: Sucking at Tournaments

[andy-ward-uk.livejournal.com]

"How do you get what you want to do emotionally in tune with what intellectually and mathematically you know is right?"

I'll try my usual meta-game non-answer and say, you don't, you find a game where the two are in synch. I don't like proportional payout Sit and Goes or Super Satellites because I hate playing to survive and there are times in both of these where that's what you should do.

A more useful tip is to try to get into this mindset : "I'm going to play 100 [or however many] tournaments this year. To turn a decent profit I need to pull in $10K [or whatever] in total prize money. 18th place for $40 is no use bearing this goal in mind, so I should go for the win instead".

Andy.

Re: Sucking at Tournaments

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Thanks Andy. Your answer is quite valid. Just settle for games (in my case, cash games at a relatively low level for my bankroll) where the two are in sync.

However, I feel that this is a bit like accepting that you are a clay court specialist in tennis, or "good in the mountains" in the Tour de France. I spent a while thinking about this tournament business on the train last night, and I concluded that perhaps I tightened up a bit,just a bit, when we were on the bubble.

There were six players. One was a nutter, who defended every blind, and I decided that there was no point trying to steal his blind. Usually one of the players was in fairly desperate straits, and I declined to try to steal their big blind on the grounds that they had a forced call. One of the other guys was the big stack. This left two people who I saw as perfect blind-stealing potential. They had more than the short stack, and enough to survive four or five rounds of blinds.

But these were limited opportunities, and the two times that I tried in this half-hour were what really led to my downfall.

Either I should have "shut up shop" or I should have played like the nutter. The "half-way house" that I chose was probably right for a skilled player in this situation, but I didn't have the touch for it.

I think that the disconnect in the prize money (and the way that this affects other players) is one of the keys here. Maybe I should "play to survive", like four of the other five players were doing in this situation. In other words, perhaps my emotional gut instinct was, in this case, correct.

Nothing wrong with the nutter style play either, though, and a lot more fun!


The "total prize money" idea has the sole flaw that my "good wins" have nearly always come from when I have been short-stacked going into the money, got lucky with a double-through, and then played survival poker, trying to edge up the rankings, rather than trying to win. In other words, I have won tournaments when I have tried to survive rather than I have tried to win! Perhaps that's a style of play that suits me, or perhaps it's suited to some blind structures, where you adopt a survival strategy on the grounds that a couple of lucky pots are all you need to propel you to big stack status.

It all comes back to playing a lot of tournaments and finding the style that suits you best. "Book styles" (in limit cash) never really seem to work for me. "We all have our own path to travel".

I remember back in 2000 or thereabouts that the common sense thing in tournaments to me (in the long term) was just to try to make the right plays hand by hand - that "targets" or "making a big laydown" and "having to build a stack" and all the other bollocks that I heard from (apparently) winning players just made no mathematical sense. Perhaps they worked for those particular players, but that didn't make them mathematically correct.

Anyway, fast forward to today and I'm beginning to hear from the new winning players exactly what I was saying six years ago. The tournament players who won back then aren't winning any more, and nearly always the refrain is the same "how could he call me with that"? What they don't see is that the entire profitability of their game was based on one thing - fold equity. Nearly all the other parts of their game were mathematically minus EV. When the fold equity vanished, so the profit at tournaments started going to other players with a better feel for the maths of the game (step forward many of the Scandinavians) who are not total dorks when it comes to live play (i.e., they don't put on their "I have a big pair" hat whenever they have an overpair).

But I think that you make an important point here. I actually like playing "survival poker" with a short stack. The game that I don't particularly enjoy (because, at the moment, I am rubbish at it) is manipulating a largish stack to victory. So, super sats and the like might be more my style. I draw the line at the three-place sit'n'goes. They just look horrible miserable games.

PJ