Tournaments and Expected Value

[duggs]

That's fine, but don't dress it up as an optimal decision, you are consciously making suboptimal decisions which lower your expected return in favour of higher frequency of pays. Sure that's fine I you want to, do what you like, but there is no argument that its optimal

 

[Lheticus]

I guess I won't anymore! I was before because I don't have a frame of reference of playing non-donk tournaments like you guys do. I imagine having such a frame would definitely alter my perspective. I guess I'm done here...not sure going forward how I'm going to get advice on this forum that I, with this particular situation, can rely on given that I'm missing such a huge piece of the poker player puzzle that everyone else isn't...ah well

 

[Debi]

Then it makes a lot more sense to us - you can't decide on optimal plays and strategy based on what you experience in freerolls - they are nothing like playing live or online tournaments for real money. If that is all you have experienced then you don't have the right experience for this discussion.

If blinds and antes didn't exist we could re-think a few things but they do and you have to play knowing that.

But when you are holding JJ and 2/3rds of your chips are in the pot and the flop comes 9 high - open shoving the rest of your chips is standard all day long - even in the early levels of the tournament. Unless you have information that 90% convinces you that your opponent could only have a stronger hand. Even then in a freeroll I am all in - there is probably never a situation in a freeroll when I would be that convinced I am behind.

 

[Lheticus]

Thank you...just one last "food for thought" thing, though. If a play being optimal is dependent on there being a table environment that's more reasonable than freerolls, if you ARE playing freerolls...can you truly say that's "optimal" play?

 

[duggs]

It's not!! What you are doing is non optimal it does NOT maximise your expectation.

 

[Debi]

Thank you...just one last "food for thought" thing, though. If a play being optimal is dependent on there being a table environment that's more reasonable than freerolls, if you ARE playing freerolls...can you truly say that's "optimal" play?

If you are still learning the game you should at least be practicing the best skills you know until they become habit.

I don't know everything and am not the best player in the world - but I have a good overall strategy for live tournaments (and online if they are big field deep stacks which is what I prefer to play). My wreckless play sometimes in freerolls has zero impact on that. I am not trying to learn anything in a freeroll and my ability to play poker does not depend on them.

However - if you don't have a good established tried and true strategy if nothing else you should be practicing them in freerolls - especially if that is all you can play at this time. Long term you will see better results by playing hands you are favored to win instead of folding them - even in freerolls. That is just a fact.

The way you are playing will result in more min-cashes and fewer final tables - which equals less money won overall. Way less.

 

[Wickedonesin]

I've been hitting the freerolls a lot myself lately. From experience I can say that finishing "in the money" is nice.. but nothing like landing at the final table for "it all." 5 .. heck even 10 min cashes won't compare to a single 1st place finish. In some cases, a single 1st thru 3rd place finish is enough winnings to get you setup for .02/.04 cash games (not a healthy BR but enough to start playing). My 4th place finish for $20 last week is 5 full 100BB Buy Ins at 4nl!

 

[Matt Vaughan]

It's one thing to not understand counter arguments and then say so. It's completely another to not understand, then throw others' statements away as if they are worthless.

If you don't understand it's even more of a reason to respect it as an idea, since there's a good chance the thoughts in play are deeper or more complicated than you realized.

Your responses were pretty long, but I will reply to this: my 65-35 example wasn't meant to be an exact mathematical outcome. It should (I hope) be obvious that most of these types of situations are nearly impossible to solve without computers. That doesn't mean that the overall sentiment isn't clear cut though.

In terms of not understanding, what aspects of what I did did you not understand exactly? You keep ignoring this term, so do you know what I mean by utility? I'm guessing it's this part since it seems to affect your personal situation the most.

 

[Lheticus]

It's one thing to not understand counter arguments and then say so. It's completely another to not understand, then throw others' statements away as if they are worthless.

If you don't understand it's even more of a reason to respect it as an idea, since there's a good chance the thoughts in play are deeper or more complicated than you realized.

Your responses were pretty long, but I will reply to this: my 65-35 example wasn't meant to be an exact mathematical outcome. It should (I hope) be obvious that most of these types of situations are nearly impossible to solve without computers. That doesn't mean that the overall sentiment isn't clear cut though.

In terms of not understanding, what aspects of what I did did you not understand exactly? You keep ignoring this term, so do you know what I mean by utility? I'm guessing it's this part since it seems to affect your personal situation the most.

I never intended to "throw anyone's response away as if it was worthless." If the language I used came across that way, I apologize--but in "not making sense" I guess I more mean, "I comprehend this so little that I can't see how it's possibly a good idea" but as I've come to discover, that's been more a function of communication ambiguities both to and from me than any merit based objection--stuff being "lost in translation" and most of all on my side, my assuming a lot of things are obvious enough to not even be said when they very, very much aren't--now THAT'S a fallacy for you. And I think I have some understanding of the concept of utility, but I'm certain a further expansion of the concept would help me.

 

[A2345Razz]

Your writing has become more and more disjointed and unintelligible, but I think I can piece together sort of what you believe....

Here are my thoughts:

1) Chip EV=/= TOURNAMENT EV at any point in a donkament in which you have an overall positive expectation, that is true.

2) There are times when Chip EV approaches very closely Tournament EV...so close that in discussing a hand where Chip EV is + it isn't really necessary to mention ICM considerations that much.

3) You seem not to grasp the reality of most donkament structures where simply lasting awhile and surviving isn't going to yield much profit at all bc so much of the prize pool is concentrated at the very top.

4) It is has been common has been common knowledge within the community that Chips do not have a constant and fixed value vis a vis prize money equity....this is called ICM. If you haven't run across the concept of the independent chip model, your time researching poker concepts has been thoroughly misspent.

 

[duggs]

Saying I prefer min cashing doesn't make it optimal. Nothing is lost in translation

 

[Matt Vaughan]

I never intended to "throw anyone's response away as if it was worthless." If the language I used came across that way, I apologize--but in "not making sense" I guess I more mean, "I comprehend this so little that I can't see how it's possibly a good idea" but as I've come to discover, that's been more a function of communication ambiguities both to and from me than any merit based objection--stuff being "lost in translation" and most of all on my side, my assuming a lot of things are obvious enough to not even be said when they very, very much aren't--now THAT'S a fallacy for you. And I think I have some understanding of the concept of utility, but I'm certain a further expansion of the concept would help me.

I wrote a reply about what utility means but it got lost to the abyss. I'll try again.

Skimming this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility may help a bit more, but I'll sum up how I think of utility.

When talking about some amount of money X, the utility of X for person Y simply refers to how much use (or utility) they get by either having or being given that amount. For example, the utility of $10,000 to the average person is much higher than the utility of the same amount to Bill Gates (since he's mega rich). Similarly the utility difference between $10,000 vs. $9,500 is not going to be very big for most people (though it will still be a bigger difference for less-rich people).

In the example of poker tournaments, if a bankrolled player is playing at reasonable stakes, then a min-cash normally will not present an overwhelming amount of utility to them. Some, but not a lot. Therefore, they should never really be sacrificing EV (a larger average payout) for the sake of a min-cash or small pay jump (lower average payout at a higher frequency). However, once pay-jumps (and therefore utility jumps) begin to get large for people, they will begin to take lines they KNOW are -EV for the sake of a greater chance at a guaranteed reasonable utility gain.

In particular if the EV sacrifice is small and the perceived increase in probability of gaining some utility is large, then people tend to do sacrifice the EV as a no-brainer (rightly or wrongly, I wouldn't care to judge). But always remember that getting a larger ITM % will often mean a decrease in average payout for a lot of people.

 

[WiZZiM]

I wrote a reply about what utility means but it got lost to the abyss. I'll try again.

Skimming this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility may help a bit more, but I'll sum up how I think of utility.

When talking about some amount of money X, the utility of X for person Y simply refers to how much use (or utility) they get by either having or being given that amount. For example, the utility of $10,000 to the average person is much higher than the utility of the same amount to Bill Gates (since he's mega rich). Similarly the utility difference between $10,000 vs. $9,500 is not going to be very big for most people (though it will still be a bigger difference for less-rich people).

In the example of poker tournaments, if a bankrolled player is playing at reasonable stakes, then a min-cash normally will not present an overwhelming amount of utility to them. Some, but not a lot. Therefore, they should never really be sacrificing EV (a larger average payout) for the sake of a min-cash or small pay jump (lower average payout at a higher frequency). However, once pay-jumps (and therefore utility jumps) begin to get large for people, they will begin to take lines they KNOW are -EV for the sake of a greater chance at a guaranteed reasonable utility gain.

In particular if the EV sacrifice is small and the perceived increase in probability of gaining some utility is large, then people tend to do sacrifice the EV as a no-brainer (rightly or wrongly, I wouldn't care to judge). But always remember that getting a larger ITM % will often mean a decrease in average payout for a lot of people.

Sums it up perfectly imo, great post!!

 

[hackmeplz]

Here's why people got frustrated. You started by asking people playing a 1k live mtt what their strategy was and then criticized responses based on the assumption that they would be exactly like you where all you can play is freerolls and you're desperate to make money and the first dollar you make is way more important than maximizing your chances of winning it. The ironic part is even if this is the case especially early in the tournament doubling your stack can definitely double your chances of cashing as well as your ev.

Also if your strategy were working for freerolls you would have probably cashed a few times to the point where you're not so desperate to just cash and where you can take chances in order to win. I mean the bottom line is you have access to a computer and internet. If you're really that desperate for the mincashes in freerolls (aren't those like 20 cents or something?) you should sell your computer/stop paying for internet.

But whatever even if in the end you've decided it's good for you to play one particular style, it's completely useless to have this discussion in a public forum as you're the only one who is in this situation, and since you've obviously figured it all 100% out you don't have anything to learn from the discussion either. So basically this is all a waste of time and for some reason you spammed it in the thread with people playing 1k tournaments (who are obviously not in your situation) and also posted in a forum for people who play actual tournaments and are generally trying to get better at maximizing their expectation for each tournament they play.

 

[rifflemao]

Always loved this quote regarding poker tournaments:

In order to live, you must be willing to die. -Amir Vahedi

 

[Lheticus]

Here's why people got frustrated. You started by asking people playing a 1k live mtt what their strategy was and then criticized responses based on the assumption that they would be exactly like you where all you can play is freerolls and you're desperate to make money and the first dollar you make is way more important than maximizing your chances of winning it. The ironic part is even if this is the case especially early in the tournament doubling your stack can definitely double your chances of cashing as well as your ev.

Also if your strategy were working for freerolls you would have probably cashed a few times to the point where you're not so desperate to just cash and where you can take chances in order to win. I mean the bottom line is you have access to a computer and internet. If you're really that desperate for the mincashes in freerolls (aren't those like 20 cents or something?) you should sell your computer/stop paying for internet.

But whatever even if in the end you've decided it's good for you to play one particular style, it's completely useless to have this discussion in a public forum as you're the only one who is in this situation, and since you've obviously figured it all 100% out you don't have anything to learn from the discussion either. So basically this is all a waste of time and for some reason you spammed it in the thread with people playing 1k tournaments (who are obviously not in your situation) and also posted in a forum for people who play actual tournaments and are generally trying to get better at maximizing their expectation for each tournament they play.

That definitely happened, and I think I can provide some additional insight into why--with my initial comment in that thread, I only wanted to discuss the positive attitude aspect of tournaments. For some reasons or others, it snowballed from there until the exact situation you describe came to be, and I unwittingly perpetuated this frustration by making what is still one of my most common communication mistakes: I failed to consider at all what my words seem like to someone outside of my head looking in. I have a bad tendency to assume that many unstated things are obvious even when claiming such would be obvious would be totally outlandish because of how my thought process has played out--it's created problems here before now, and many other areas of my life besides, and I'm not sure how to work on it.

However, even with all that, I don't know where you get that I think "I obviously have it all 100% worked out" from. In fact, recently I actually tried being less timid in the opening stages of one of the aforementioned "on demand" freerolls, and after winning a couple all ins, my results improved dramatically. I can only conjecture that because I argue against what they're saying so firmly, people assume that I'm being dismissive of their points when the reality is very far from that. Unfortunately, in most cases of such arguments, the reality ISN'T far from that, and I've done nothing in this debate to conclusively indicate otherwise to this point. I understand this now, and I'm sorry for being so unreasonable, particularly with assumptions such as that--that with no priori data, people can realize that it isn't my intent to be dismissive of them, and with not doing any of the things I should have to fight this assumption.

In essence, if it looks like a dick and barks like a dick, it's probably a dick, so I apologize for unwittingly being a dick in all this.

 

[suit2please]

I think the problem came from you thinking you were being insulted. Which from my viewpoint started with "logical fallacy", which at least imo wasn't in anyway insulting.

Having started all my bankrolls from nothing, I have been in your position and get why you are thinking this way. Thousands of times I have clicked all in, gotten called, been ahead and lost. Its been so long now that when called Im expecting to be sucked out on. But I digress. Having started with nothing and not being able to play anything but freerolls every cent means a lot. But not taking +EV spots just means you win less, so have less cents. Most of my freeroll play was preBF and FRs were everywhere. Now on Merge I pretty much only see 1 $50 a day, so Id guess there are a lot less of them for a lot less money. But either way you want to play to maximize your winnings, which will hopefully get you to someday play real money games.

 

[Matt Vaughan]

That definitely happened, and I think I can provide some additional insight into why--with my initial comment in that thread, I only wanted to discuss the positive attitude aspect of tournaments. For some reasons or others, it snowballed from there until the exact situation you describe came to be, and I unwittingly perpetuated this frustration by making what is still one of my most common communication mistakes: I failed to consider at all what my words seem like to someone outside of my head looking in. I have a bad tendency to assume that many unstated things are obvious even when claiming such would be obvious would be totally outlandish because of how my thought process has played out--it's created problems here before now, and many other areas of my life besides, and I'm not sure how to work on it.

However, even with all that, I don't know where you get that I think "I obviously have it all 100% worked out" from. In fact, recently I actually tried being less timid in the opening stages of one of the aforementioned "on demand" freerolls, and after winning a couple all ins, my results improved dramatically. I can only conjecture that because I argue against what they're saying so firmly, people assume that I'm being dismissive of their points when the reality is very far from that. Unfortunately, in most cases of such arguments, the reality ISN'T far from that, and I've done nothing in this debate to conclusively indicate otherwise to this point. I understand this now, and I'm sorry for being so unreasonable, particularly with assumptions such as that--that with no priori data, people can realize that it isn't my intent to be dismissive of them, and with not doing any of the things I should have to fight this assumption.

In essence, if it looks like a dick and barks like a dick, it's probably a dick, so I apologize for unwittingly being a dick in all this.

Don't want to draw this thread out, since it appears it's reaching its end, but it takes a lot of gumption to admit to having overreacted and/or apologizing for stuff that escalated - thanks for proving me wrong about your original post.

I know I played some role in the escalation as well, so I'm sorry that my initial posts came across as overly harsh. As has been speculated above, my "logical fallacy" comment was not a personal slight but rather my own observation and perception of the situation - namely, ignoring that multiple tournaments can lead to a potential long run. Just because I found that self-evident through my own experiences doesn't make it fair for me to assume that your experiences should or shouldn't have led you to similar conclusions.

Thank you again for taking the time to write that reply. I shouldn't have more to add here most likely, so cheers 'til next time.