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On The Chilterns
Nov. 14th, 2008 07:05 amAnd so it's north-west for me today, to Birmingham for MidCon. A chance to meet up with people with whom I seem to be losing touch. My interest in games-playing (well, my interest in games learning) has sunk to zero. Which is a bit of a bummer, because all the people I know at the Con tend to want to play games that I have never played before. You spend 40 minutes not knowing what the fuck you are meant to do, and the last 40 minutes realizing how badly you played in the first 40 minutes, suffering as two or three others remain fascinated in that battle for the all-important second place.
Personally I get no satisfaction out of beating people like me (i.e., first-time players), but this seems to be a minority feeling amongst con attendees, where a win, any win, is what matters. I can understand that in poker (although I still get greater pleasure from taking money off a good player than I do when I skin a fish), but the point of it in a game where the only reward is the satisfaction of being better at a game than someone else, well, it rather eludes me. If you've played the game six times before and your opponent hasn't played it at all, beating that opponent merely shows that you have played it six times and that he hasn't played it at all.
I'd quite enjoy playing Puerto Rico with people as bad and ill-practised at it as me. Playing it with the likes of Oakes is torture, as you just get outplayed round after round.
But, the food is always fun.
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Some tentative steps into low-stakes heads-up last night, just to try to get a feel for the game. I'm not going to learn much about the game at these low levels, but I might learn something about the logistics.
1) 15 minutes' play two-tabling was tiring. Part of that is because it's new. But I looked at the Holdemm Manager stats after and extrapolated that two-tabling heads-up is the equivalent workrate (in hands played) of four-tabling full ring (about 230 hands an hour). In terms of "decisions per hour" it's probably the equivalent of six-tabling. Then again, I was playing 75% of hands and raising 55% pre-flop, so perhaps I was a little too laggy.
2) Rake equivalent is probably higher (concomitant with my greater proportional activity, I guess). Four-tabling at $100 buy-in costs me about $10 an hour in rake. Two-tabling at $100 buy-in would cost me $50 an hour plus. But this is misleading, because two-tabling at $100 buy-in would have a much higher SD and potential win-rate. I would say that two-tabling $25 buy-in Heads-up is the equivalent, in likely rake, standard deviation, and win potential, as four-tabling $100 buy-in.
3) You can see where this leads. Potential profit at Heads Up is considerably higher, because there are (a) more games at lower level buy ins, (b) worse players (c) greater "move-up" potential before you head into very sticky areas. One of the reasons I have stuck mainly to $100 buy-in full ring is that at higher levels the number of games begins to thin out drastically, while the wait times to sit down get longer (and the opponents get much tougher). If I could cut my number of tables in half and move down two buy-in levels, and yet maintain my expected win rate and volatility, I'd be delighted.
4) However, I would need to average just over one opponent "destruction" per hour to do this (i.e., taking an opponent's full stack). If we assume that stack-offs work 60/40 in my favour, then that would need five full-stack variations (I win three, lose two) per hour, in 230 hands. From my experience at the lower levels last night, one all-in every 40 hands might not be pie-in-the-sky thinking.
Interesting stuff. Perhaps I should start a new blog on "my heads-up journey". At least, if the journey turns out to be successful, you can have a laugh looking back at posts from a couple of years before (see Andy Ward's Secrets of the Amateurs for examples of such an odyssey).
To Work!!!!
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Personally I get no satisfaction out of beating people like me (i.e., first-time players), but this seems to be a minority feeling amongst con attendees, where a win, any win, is what matters. I can understand that in poker (although I still get greater pleasure from taking money off a good player than I do when I skin a fish), but the point of it in a game where the only reward is the satisfaction of being better at a game than someone else, well, it rather eludes me. If you've played the game six times before and your opponent hasn't played it at all, beating that opponent merely shows that you have played it six times and that he hasn't played it at all.
I'd quite enjoy playing Puerto Rico with people as bad and ill-practised at it as me. Playing it with the likes of Oakes is torture, as you just get outplayed round after round.
But, the food is always fun.
+++++++++++
Some tentative steps into low-stakes heads-up last night, just to try to get a feel for the game. I'm not going to learn much about the game at these low levels, but I might learn something about the logistics.
1) 15 minutes' play two-tabling was tiring. Part of that is because it's new. But I looked at the Holdemm Manager stats after and extrapolated that two-tabling heads-up is the equivalent workrate (in hands played) of four-tabling full ring (about 230 hands an hour). In terms of "decisions per hour" it's probably the equivalent of six-tabling. Then again, I was playing 75% of hands and raising 55% pre-flop, so perhaps I was a little too laggy.
2) Rake equivalent is probably higher (concomitant with my greater proportional activity, I guess). Four-tabling at $100 buy-in costs me about $10 an hour in rake. Two-tabling at $100 buy-in would cost me $50 an hour plus. But this is misleading, because two-tabling at $100 buy-in would have a much higher SD and potential win-rate. I would say that two-tabling $25 buy-in Heads-up is the equivalent, in likely rake, standard deviation, and win potential, as four-tabling $100 buy-in.
3) You can see where this leads. Potential profit at Heads Up is considerably higher, because there are (a) more games at lower level buy ins, (b) worse players (c) greater "move-up" potential before you head into very sticky areas. One of the reasons I have stuck mainly to $100 buy-in full ring is that at higher levels the number of games begins to thin out drastically, while the wait times to sit down get longer (and the opponents get much tougher). If I could cut my number of tables in half and move down two buy-in levels, and yet maintain my expected win rate and volatility, I'd be delighted.
4) However, I would need to average just over one opponent "destruction" per hour to do this (i.e., taking an opponent's full stack). If we assume that stack-offs work 60/40 in my favour, then that would need five full-stack variations (I win three, lose two) per hour, in 230 hands. From my experience at the lower levels last night, one all-in every 40 hands might not be pie-in-the-sky thinking.
Interesting stuff. Perhaps I should start a new blog on "my heads-up journey". At least, if the journey turns out to be successful, you can have a laugh looking back at posts from a couple of years before (see Andy Ward's Secrets of the Amateurs for examples of such an odyssey).
To Work!!!!
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