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What's your WSOP overlay?
Aug. 1st, 2006 04:45 pmI was idly wondering to myself; suppose I was a good tournament player, a really good player of big tournaments with slow structures. What would my overlay be in the WSOP "big one"?
Well, why not break the tournament down into single table satellites? It's not perfectly accurate, but the percentages might come out fairly similarly.
The question here is, what kind of overlay would you have in STSs if you, like, man, really owned the rest of the field? I reckoned that you might think to win between one in three and one in four of the 10-table satellites.
So, if we have 8,800 runners, that makes you between 25% and 33% to be at the 880 stage, and so on to the 88 stage, and so on to the final table, and so on to win it.
But, of course, your dominance will erode as you get nearer the finish (although it will probably increase around the bubble stage).
So, let's make you 25% for the first stage, 33% for the second stage, 30% for the third stage and 12% for the final table.
That gives our hypothetical brilliant player a one in four chance of making the money, a one in 12 chance of making the last nine tables, a nearly 4% chance of making the final table and a half a percent chance of winning it.
In other words, even with probably the most optimistic overlay in the world, you could only expect to win the current WSOP big one once every 200 years, although you could expect to reach the final table once every 25 years.
What does this mean for the players who have done well in the first day? Well, it means that that a one-in-25 year event has become a one in six-year event, even if you are only on average chips. If you are on significantly more than average chips, you have cut things even further, perhaps to a one-in-four-year event, while your chance of winning it has been cut to about 40-to-1.
That's a lot better than when you started Day 1A, 1B, 1C or 1D with $T10,000.
Monthly figures to follow, I've got some hands to grind.
( the month's figures )
Well, why not break the tournament down into single table satellites? It's not perfectly accurate, but the percentages might come out fairly similarly.
The question here is, what kind of overlay would you have in STSs if you, like, man, really owned the rest of the field? I reckoned that you might think to win between one in three and one in four of the 10-table satellites.
So, if we have 8,800 runners, that makes you between 25% and 33% to be at the 880 stage, and so on to the 88 stage, and so on to the final table, and so on to win it.
But, of course, your dominance will erode as you get nearer the finish (although it will probably increase around the bubble stage).
So, let's make you 25% for the first stage, 33% for the second stage, 30% for the third stage and 12% for the final table.
That gives our hypothetical brilliant player a one in four chance of making the money, a one in 12 chance of making the last nine tables, a nearly 4% chance of making the final table and a half a percent chance of winning it.
In other words, even with probably the most optimistic overlay in the world, you could only expect to win the current WSOP big one once every 200 years, although you could expect to reach the final table once every 25 years.
What does this mean for the players who have done well in the first day? Well, it means that that a one-in-25 year event has become a one in six-year event, even if you are only on average chips. If you are on significantly more than average chips, you have cut things even further, perhaps to a one-in-four-year event, while your chance of winning it has been cut to about 40-to-1.
That's a lot better than when you started Day 1A, 1B, 1C or 1D with $T10,000.
Monthly figures to follow, I've got some hands to grind.
( the month's figures )
