peterbirks: (Default)
[personal profile] peterbirks
I suppose it could only be a matter of time before other parts of my company's vast publishing sprawl got to hear of my online exploits. The legal and tax division want to talk to me about online gambling, presumably with a view to commissioning a pice. Oh bollocks. It's not thatthe money isn't nice (money for old rope, if truth be told), it's just the giving up of a weekend and the admin involved in chasing up payment. I'm not very good at submitting invoices and chasing up payments. I'd make a crap businessman.

++++++

End of the road for Gryko, and I'll be interested to hear what some of the peasants make of the way he went out. Here's the report I have.

With blinds and antes making the pot up to about 90K, the chip leader makes it 100K to go with a raise under the gun. Richard, on the button, pushes all in for 920K. Jamie Gold calls with AK and Richard turns over J3. The AK holds up and Richard is eliminated.

A moment of madness? Not really. Look at what might have been going through Richard's mind.

1) Jamie has probably been doing this a lot, using his chip lead
2) While 100K is not much of his stack, a million is a reasonable percentage of it
3) It's near the end of the day. Most people are probably only making big bets with premium hands
4) Richard is on the button, and he knows that Jamie knows it. With something like, say, J3s, a call might make some sense, but an all-in raise when such a raise isn't necessary against the chip leader probably means a very big hand that wants a call.

Put all these together and Ricahrd probably reckons he has a fold equity of about 80% here.
Of the remaining 20%, Gold will have two high cards about 70% of the time, and a pair 30% of the time. He'll probably only have an overpair 5% of the time.

There is nearly 200K in the pot, giving Richard a 20% RoE if Jamie folds.
If Jamie calls, Richard probably reckons he has an average 36% or thereabouts chance of winning and doubling through.

So, the all-in raise gives us an expected return of
Gold Folds: 200K x 0.8 = 160K
Gold calls, Gold loses: 1.0m x 0.36 x 0.2 = 72K
Gold calls, Gold wins: - 920K x 0.64 x 0.2= minus -118K

Giving an EV from the all-in raise of +124K.

Of course, the nonces will say "but his tournament life was at stake!" But you don't get to these positions in tournaments thinking like a scared prick.

Personally, I wouldn't have made the move, but I can understand why the move was made and, provided you accept that with 50 players left, chips held was fairly closely directly proportional to equity, then it only becomes a wrong play if Gold is very likely to call the reraise.

Suppose he's 80% likely to call:

Gold folds: 200K x 0.2 = 40K
Gold calls, GOld loses: 1.0m x 0.36 x 0.8 = 288K
Gold calls, Gold wins: -920K x 0.64 x 0.8 = -471K

That makes it an expected EV from this move of minus 143K.

From these numbers, it looks like the crossover point is around about 55%. If Gold is 55% (or more) likely to fold to the reraise, then Richard's reraise all-in has positive EV.

It will be interesting to see how many posters on various fora see it that way.

PJ

Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 10:57 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
10/10 style but minus several million for good sense. Literally. While Jamie Gold now sits pretty on 7.5 mill chips and is looking good for a 7-figure payout Gryko is busted.

"If Jamie calls, Richard probably reckons he has an average 36% or thereabouts chance of winning and doubling through."

Whoa! Rewind! J3o has about a 34% chance against two random cards. [OK thats from memory it might be a tad off]. How on earth do you determine that it has a 36% chance against hands that call? Halving to 18% is more realistic. It's just too weak a hand. If you're going to make a move like this with trash at least wait for something like JT suited and give yourself a chance.

Matt

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 11:24 am (UTC)
ext_44: (what the shatner?)
From: [identity profile] jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com
I respectfully argue that anyone who can get through forty-plus hours of tournament poker of a very high (though not the highest) standard cannot reasonably be said to equal donkey. Presumably you're joking, but not very kindly.

OK, you've just caught me in a grumpy mood.

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 11:49 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I was just referring to that hand - but I think it's a horrible way to bust. With an M of 11 there are better spots than this. You have to give an under the gun raiser more credit for a hand. There's also a typo in the original analysis and it should be +114K not +124K. With a more realistic estimate of the chance of winning if called (36% is simply wrong) the EV comes down to around 50K or 5% of Gryko's stack which is essentially 0 EV given all the assumptions - and the fact we've ignored the blinds who might wake up with a monster. With the payoff structure rapidly steepening and many very short stacks busting I see absolutely no justification for this move.

Matt

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 11:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
Random cards was what I had in mind, except random cards not so likely to have a 3 in them. I typed it up in about 5 minutes (some of use have work to do in the morning!) but at least I supplied figures (even if the figures might be disagreed with) to back up my premise. Your response is the standard line of "that's way too weak" or "it's wrong", without any follow-through on why you think this is minus EV.

Now, there ARE lines for saying that this is minus EV, and I do write that I wouldn't have made the play. One line might be that Jamie is in Andy Ward mode, which means that he is going to call the reraise 100% of the time with any two cards.

But I'd love to know where you get 18% from. That's way off. But, for goodness sake, READ WHAT I WROTE! I'm going through Gryko's thought processes, which are done in real time.

However, your attitude is the one that I expect and hope most people to have. It's (a) results orientated (I haven't seen you question similar, unreported actions that he might have made on day two and day three, which worked) and (b) it's survival orientated, not win orientated. You can say that you wouldn't have made that play yourself, but you can only say that it was wrong if you contend that it's minus EV. Now, I'll accept that there are arguments for it being minus EV, but these are not certainties, just matters of opinion on (a) Gold's raising standards here and (b) Gryko's fold equity.

It actually occurred to me that making the move against the chip leader makes sense in another way, in that, if you double through, your equity improvement might actually be greater than your increase in chips.

Mike Caro once wrote that, after he went, say $50,000 up, but fell back to $30,000 up, the stupidest question he got asked was "why didn't you quit when you got to $50,000 up?" The reason it was such a stupid question is that, when he got to $30,000 up and then went on to finish $50,000 up, no-one asked him "why didn't you quit when you got to $30,000 up?". In a sense, the criticism of this play is like that. No-one will say "why did you make that idiotic play with T3 off on day two?" or "you shouldn't have raised with J3 off on day three", because in botrh those cases (and probably in dozens more like them, his opponent folded. Or, if his opponent didn't fold, he got lucky and won through.

PJ

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 12:39 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
It's not results oriented. If the flop came JJ3 I'd still be critical.

I've no idea how Jamie Gold was playing but the fact remains he has raised UTG. Let's suppose he's raising UTG with real big hands, plus other pairs, and other hands like suited connectors. But he will only call the re-raise with a genuine UTG raising hand. Against a range AA-JJ/AK/AQ then J3 is around 15%. You can throw in some other hands and maybe get a figure like 20% but 36%? Where you've gone wrong is claiming simultaneously that he's 20% likely to call but if he does then J3 has a 36% chance. If he's calling 100% of the time AND raising with any two cards UTG then yes, sure 36% chance is fine, but if he's only calling 20% of the time then he will be calling with his 20% BEST hands. The chance of J3 prevailing is negatively correlated with the likelihood of getting called.

For example:

Gold calls 100% of the time, J3 has 36% EV -229K
Gold calls 40% of the time, J3 has 30% EV -18K
Gold calls 20% of the time, J3 has ~18% EV 45K
Gold calls 10% of the time, J3 has ~10% EV 107K (! but unlikely)

So the plays works best against a very loose UTG raiser who is very tight when it comes to calling re-raises ... not surprising as most of the EV is from fold equity. I don't believe that a good player is raising UTG with two random cards though. He has a better than average hand to begin with.

I don't know the blind stack sizes but there is a 2-3% chance that one of them wakes up with AA/KK/QQ and plays it knocking your EV down a few more %-age points. However you slice it, under reasonable assumptions, I can't see an +EV of better than 30K-40K and would prefer an assessment of 0.

And this analysis ignores the rising payout structure. Merely surviving a few more rounds might net tens of thousands of dollars so risking elimination for an arguable +EV of 3%-4% of your stack when not under immediate pressure to do so makes no sense.

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 01:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
Yep good point. The chance of winning if called is lower (although not, I feel, as far as 18%) because Gold is only calling with the best 20% of his raising hands. I missed that.

Still a positive EV, though.

Your "rising payout structure" was not ignored by me. I did say that the assumption was that "chip count" equals "equity". The "tens of thousands of dollars" concept is not the correct line of thought (although it is definitely the line of thought that I and all the other players at this table would probably take/ did take!). The correct line is to say "how much more in equity is 1.2m than 920k?" You are implicitly stating that there is a degradation in improvement (i.e., that it's worth a significantly smaller increase in equity than the increase in chips held indicates). This is a hard one to call, mainly because no-one has worked out the empirical maths for this yet (although I keep meaning to one day!), let alone the theoretical maths.

The "SB or BB wake up with a monster" argument is a good point. There's a 2% chance that either of these will push in (assuming that neither would fold AA or KK but both would fold QQ and AK) as well. Of course, there's a, what, 15% chance that the J3 will crack both hands and triple up, so this doesn't slash 2 points from the EV, but we've got to guess that Gold will fold to the push from the blind. So it's not far off a 2% cut.

Of course, we don't know what reads on the blinds Gryko got here!

My original piece concludes that I think the move is positive EV if Gold is likely to fold 55% or more of the time. But I'll take all this on board (although Richard didn't have the pleasure of the time available that we have) and say that it probably needs a 65% likelihood that Gold will fold to the reraise. If Gold knows what he is doing, he isn't going to fold to the reraise, not with anything, which makes me wonder about the sagacity of the play. But, as I wrote originally, I can see the thought processes behind making the play, and, hell, I wasn't there. There's a strong case to be made for it being positive EV.

PJ

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 02:17 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Gold was the player who folded QQ to a reraise from a shortstacked player on Day 3. He was loudly berated for the fold by his opponenet, who could not believe that one of the big stacks was folding such a strong holding for such a tiny reraise.

Whether this hand - which was widely reported - was a factor in Richard's decision to push, only he can tell you.

If you're looking to win the thing then I agree that it was the right move against the right player, but unfortunately, it was made at the wrong time.

I'd have folded but with this much money at stake, I'd have been have been happy with a top 20 finish. Richard was aiming considerably higher.

Jamie (not Gold obviously)

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 02:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
Hi Jamie: That's interesting.

I agree entirely with your final sentence. I think that this is the key factor. I would have folded too, but a double-up here would have reduced the chip-leader's equity as well as significantly increasing Richard's.

Then again, end of the day. Tiredness? A fractional miscalculation? A misread, even? Who knows? Ron Fanelli summed up tournaments for me. He said that he had never seen anyone so miserable when cashing for $165,000. But, well, that's the point. I would have felt terrible, absolutely bereft. If you are at the final six tables, and you have been playing that long, it gets to the stage where you can taste the win. The emotional involvement must be tortuous.

PJ

PJ

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 02:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] andy-ward-uk.livejournal.com
You're not strengthening your argument by pulling numbers out of the air.

J3 off is 26% against JJ/AQ and 45% against any two cards.

Andy.

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 03:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] andy-ward-uk.livejournal.com
And saying that 50K EV = 0 EV didn't help either.

Andy.

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-07 04:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
Ahh, now they are more my kind of numbers! The trouble with having to type away when you have a couple of deadlines looking over you an hour and three hours away respectively is that you have to "rush it", but the advantage is, by doing so, you get a closer simulation of what was going through the player's head.

45% against two random cards, eh? Phwoar. Makes the EV a little bit higher, doesn't it.

If we make it a 50% chance of a call, things must get fairly close, although you still have the "how far do you respect the initial raise in the first place". There's no "you HAVE to respect it", because if the guy is doing it on any two cards, then respecting the raise is plain wrong. If Jamie was doing it with his "best 50%", and then called the reraise with the best 50% of that ( a dubious assumption given the guy's form), then you have 25% of all hands. What chance would J3 off have against "the best 25%"? More than 18%, certainly. Less than 36%, certainly. About 29%?

That gives us:

Gold folds half the time: EV 200K x 0.5 = 100K
Gold calls half time, wins: EV -920 x .71 x 0.5 = -326K
Gold calls half time, loses: EV 1m x .29 x 0.5 = 145k

which is a negative EV. I think that, if you add in the chances of one of the blinds "waking up" (but ignoring the less tangible argument on how much chip equity = prize equity) then you are going to need a 65% chance or better of Jamie to fold for the all-in reraise to be right here.

Gold folds 65% of time: EV 200K x 0.65 = 130K
Gold calls 35% of time, wins: EV -920 x 0.73 x 0.35 = -235K
Gold calls 35% of time, wins: EV 1m x 0.27 x 0.35 = 94.5

Whoah, so close. Change the 0.73 to 0.72, or change the percentage of hands that Gold would have raised with, and you are at break even to ahead.

The whole marginality of the thing makes me feel that it's a hard play to criticise outright, even if you wouldn't have made the play yourself.


PJ

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-08 01:21 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Hello Pete.
"He's open raised every single hand he could, and folded to significant heat. Its the last hand before the break which he probably views as a particularly easy one to steal. I am a below avg stack but I have enough to make him fold and if he does so I increase my stack from 900k to 1.1m. I need chips to play the game I want to, I don't think he'll call very often at all, and if he does I guess I'll have to get lucky."

Now, that was all before any cards were dealt. I was intending to do it blind, but decided to look just in case I had a big hand in which case I might reassess my intended plan of counter attack.
He raised, as I knew he would, it was folded to me, and I found the ol' J-3. No way he calls anywhere close to the percentage of the time some estimates assume. Once in six was my gut estimate. Your original post pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Regards,
Richard

Re: Gryko = Donkey

Date: 2006-08-08 04:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
Hi Richard:

Unlucky mate. Nice to see that my analytical powers are spot on, even if I can't play tournaments for shit.

These big MTTs are a perpetual game of Russian Roulette, and those people who refuse to pull the trigger eventually find themselves short-stacked and forced to pull the trigger anyway, except this time the barrel has five
bullets in it rather than one.

Obviously you would have preferred JTs. Obviously you would have preferred that Gold wasn't three to your left. But, in both the metaphorical and literal sense, we have to play with the cards that we are dealt.

Why worry about it. Fame is shit, and there's another tournament next week. I expect that Full Tilt will be starting $5 turbo rebuy qualifying tournies from Monday.

There's always the WPT at the Bellagio in December. Now, there's a proper tournament.

PJ

Date: 2006-08-08 01:56 am (UTC)
alanj: (Default)
From: [personal profile] alanj
It's very difficult to judge these things from afar, when the players have been with each other for hours and we have no idea what the table conditions are; but I have a hard time imagining table conditions under which this isn't a horrible move.

The 80% fold percentage, IMHO, is a pipe dream. That's like someone raising any pair, and then folding anything but AA/KK and sometimes QQ to a reraise. I think most players have enough sense to realize that if you're raising deuces, you can't fold jacks when someone plays back.

Granted, Gold has demonstrated a lack of sense, with his well-publicized QQ fold earlier in the tournament, and his comments in Card Player - incidentally I'm amused at how it's now possible to "advertise" to every player at every table of a MTT through the media - but it's reckless to assume that this will manifest as a consistent willingness to lay down to reraises preflop, rather than an overreliance on tells, an overall erratic approach, etc.

Suppose he's 60% to get a fold. The blinds present a further problem. If conditions are right for the J3 move to be halfway sane - Gold is raising frequently and will lay down often - then the blinds will probably also know this, and are alert to the chance of a resteal. (Not expecting J3, sure, but 66 or T9s wouldn't shock them.) I don't think they'll be folding QQ, or AK, or JJ. A shortish stack, getting odds of almost 2:1, may call with even worse hands.

And then there's nonlinear chip value. (Maybe this doesn't apply to him; maybe winning is really his only concern; but most of us have at least some regard for money.) I haven't run numbers, but let's take a WAG and say chips have been devalued by 1/3 by the guaranteed payouts thus far, and if you bust the value of busting later as opposed to now is $70k. (Since he's virtually certain to make the next $60k money step, and very likely to make the one after that, this seems conservative.) If you have a 1/7 chance of busting by making this move (which again seems low), that's -$10k in survival equity on an attempt to steal $120k (180k chips * 2/3)... a small factor but enough to tip to the negative quite frequently.

Again, it's virtually impossible to accurately assess all the factors - just one of the reasons why poker is a horrible spectator sport :) - but without some pretty extreme unspoken factors going on, beyond just "Gold is being a bully", it looks like a bad play from here.

Date: 2006-08-08 05:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
Hi Alan:

Yep, these are sound analytical points. Richard addresses some of them (he sees the fold chance as 83%, and has said that Gold was open-raising every hand that he could) and also points out that "I need chips to play the way I want to".

That, if anything, is perhaps the chink in the armour. Perhaps if Richard didn't need the chips to play the way he wanted to. Perhaps if he could have still been in his comfort zone with fractionally fewer than average chips, and perhaps if he'd had the regard for money that you and I have, he wouldn't have made the play. But, would he have got to the $10K entry fee without being forced to wear shite online/B&M poker site's garb if he had had the same regard for money as you or I? Probably not.

Your point re SB and BB is accurate, to a point, but I reckon their train of thought is more likely to be: "shit, this could well be a resteal. I have JJ. But, darn, it's all my chips, and it might not be a resteal, and if I fold, I'm bound to make the next prize level. That would nearly pay off my mortgage. Hell, I'll fold. Other players' assessment of the non-linear value of chips works to the raiser's advantage.

PJ

Date: 2006-08-08 05:49 am (UTC)
alanj: (Default)
From: [personal profile] alanj
Did Gryko post about the hand somewhere?

I don't know how risk-averse people are playing at the final few tables, but my friend Sabyl (who finished 56th) commented that there was much less scared play after the bubble burst. Other onlookers have commented on players being remarkably willing to risk going bust, and how rapidly players were being eliminated. Based on that I wouldn't count on the blinds playing scared.

But then, Gryko was at the table, I wasn't. Maybe he had a strong read on them as being scared, or maybe he even picked up an advance-action tell. I was startled at how many of those I was able to pick up, as a complete live-game newbie, during my brief WSOP experience.

Date: 2006-08-08 06:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
Gryko's post is in this thread, Alan, just above your original post.

PJ

Date: 2006-08-08 08:08 am (UTC)
alanj: (Default)
From: [personal profile] alanj
Ah, OK, I don't think that was there when I started writing my first comment.

If the guy truly was open-raising blind at every single opportunity, and had never called a reraise without a premium hand, it does seem like a prime resteal opportunity, and kudos to Gryko for fearlessly seizing it. That would indeed be an extreme example of bizarre table conditions.

Date: 2006-08-08 07:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
I just ran this hand on pokercalc, simulating that, UTG, Gold would raise only with the best 50% of hands, and would then call the reraise with the best 50% of those.

When Gold calls in this scenario, J3 off is 37%.

That gives EV of:
Gold folds 200k x 0.5 = +100k
Gold calls, wins: -920K x 0.63 x 0.5 = minus 290K
Gold calls, loses: +1m x 0.37 x 0.5 = +185k

If you add in, say, a 1% chance of one of the blinds waking up with a monster and calling (and winning), then Richard's play becomes fractionally minus EV under the "half the hands, call with the best half". As Richard said, he didn't think that this was the situation, but it's an interesting number to use as a base starting point if you are in a tournament and an aggressive player is doing the same kind of thing.

PJ

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