Oct. 31st, 2006

peterbirks: (Default)
Nice though it was to get pimped by Dr Pauly a few weeks ago, I am afraid that I have to bow down to Mikey when it comes to the South London Mafia's spread throughout blogdom. Mikey doesn't just get pimped by Iggy on http://guinnessandpoker.blogspot.com/ , he actually gets an entire screed quoted verbatim. This related to Mike's three games against Full Tilt professionals a couple of weekends back.

However, I couldn't help but chuckle at this. Here's Mike, who for decades has been telling audiences of five or (by the end of the story) fewer about various incidents at Charlton games, or (more likely) on the cricket pitch, and then his first tale about a poker encounter gets reprinted on a blog that probably has a readership in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Where's the justice, eh?

+++++++

A three-figure gain in 20 minutes on Full Tilt this afternoon. Thank gawd for that. I was beginning to worry that either I had totally lost it, or that all the fish had vanished and I was skiing in a shark-infested lagoon with balsa-wood skis. Finally I found opponents who had some kind of hand when I had Queens or better, and finally my hands were holding up. Jeez that felt good.

And, speaking of which, my illness lifted almost as suddenly as it came on. I felt like garbage at 6am, and by noon I felt verging on okay. Definitely one of the worst flu bouts I've had in my memory. It's rare that I'm so weak that my legs actually give way (well, rare since I stopped drinking, anyhoo).

+++++

I played a 300FPP turbo rebuy on Stars this afternoon, just to burn up some points. Eventually I went out with KJ vs A2, but that's not the point of the tale. I don't know how Andy Ward plays this kind of turbo rebuy super-sat, but I follow the rough principle of

a) you have no fold equity before the end of the rebuys
b) you have a fair amount of fold equity after the end of the rebuys
c) if you have a hand that's likely giving you pot odds, don't be afraid of calling all-in.

The observant among you might like to know that it was (c) that killed me, since I was getting 2-to-1 for my money to a frequent raiser. Since my K-J was only a 13-to-8 dog, I'm happy with my call. Others might have folded it.

But, no, that isn't the point of the tale. The point of the tale is that any half-way sensible player who knows how to play a short stack must have massive positive EV in these things. The numbers went as follows:

Entrants: 93
Rebuys: 77
Add-ons (equal to 1.5 times original stack for original buy-in): 44

Qualifiers (8,000FPP) 7, plus smaller FPPs for 8th and 9th.

And (and this is the killer) players left in at end of rebuy period: 51

So, not only do you get 77 rebuys, but 42 of the players simply walked away from the opportunity to rebuy. Now, as you and I know, although you don't want to have to rebuy, it is hardly ever correct to walk away from the opportuity so to do (there's a mathematical kink in this if the blinds become ridiculously high and you are the big blind at the end of the break, but that's a very rare situation). Therefore if nearly half the field is giving up positive EV, it has to go somewhere, and that is in the general direction of the remaining players.

Now, suppose you don't play like a loose rebuy lunatic "because the blinds go up so fast". Suppose you just stick to positive EV plays. Sometimes this will mean you rebuy a few times, sometimes it means you will turn your original stack into a very big one. But, most of the time, you will end up slightly ahead of where you started. You then add on, and you find yourself relatively (but not dangerously) short-stacked.

By this I mean that nearly everyone is short-stacked, relative to the blinds, so if you have only paid 600 FPP to get there, and someone else has paid 1200 FPP to get a stack twice as much, he has not got twice the EV in the satellite as you have - partly because it's a supersat.

Therefore (I think), that should mean that the EV given up by the players who fail to rebuy passes disproportionately to the players who have not been loose rebuy lunatics before the end of the rebuy period.

Well, that's the theory, but what about the practice? If you average one rebuy and one add-on for a total chip count of $3,500 by the end of the rebuy period (i.e., you are dead level), then you would, in the above situation, have 3500/236000 of the chips in play, or 1.48%, compared with an average chip count of 4627, or 1.96% of all the chips in play. How much does this impact your EV of qualifying? That's a bit of a toughie. But I know that I would rather have 3,500 in chips for 900FPP than 6,500 chips for 1800FPP.


October figures and commentary )

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