The Grandma dilemma: Debunking the myths

[rockin]

[ QUOTE ]
How does having the same account at the same table screw the other seven guys??? What is this TILT? What ways make it so advantageous to have two accounts at one table? I guess you can fold an AK preflop if your other hand contains an ace. Just seems like one less donk to take money from to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

as Ansky pointed out, trapping for one. for another, that is another 2 cards you now know are out of the deck. for another, 2 colluders could raise back and forth to force someone out of a pot, or with the nuts, colluder 1 can make a bet that is callable by 3rd party, then colluder 2 make a small reraise, 3rd party would have to call and so on.

poker is a game of misinformation and INCOMPLETE information. Knowing where 2 other cards out of the deck are, is extremely huge.

[CardSharpCook]

[ QUOTE ]
This is an incredibly important post.

The cry of most people who multiplayer is that the chances of winding up at the same table are so small is to render them moot. Obviously thats not true. Lets see some justifications now.


That said, I think that multiplayering is much more rare in these smaller events than in the massive sunday fields. The party super argument is the one that for me carries the most weight.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mike, as an honest person, you have trouble getting into the mind of a dishonest person. A cheater is more likely to search for ways in which his cheating edge can be made greater. This would mean playing tournies with smaller fields. In fact, were I a cheater here's what I would do:

1) Concentrate of tournies with $100 buy in and fields btwn 1-200.

2) When on the same table, encourage action by double limping hands.

3) The Re-resteal: Player A tries to steal my blind. I reraise with one account and then push with my second account. I think that my FE would be significantly higher in this situation.

4) Chip parity: when my two stacks are of different value, I would dump chips from the stack of greater value to the stack of lesser value.

5) Nut finder: I would be able to bet my K-high flush with more confidnce.

6) Out counter: I would not play 22 if my other account folded 92.

7) Action steal: multi-way pots can allow you to work with the other players to get a best hand to fold more easily than they would in a HU pot. I would get into pots with thinking players who can fold an overpair and with my 2 accounts, make the action such that it encourages a fold.

8) Second-best folding - I would avoid showdowns and PFs with one account if I knew that the other account had a much greater chance of winning.

9) Pot Juicer: Particularily in Limit tournies, I would get involved in a pot with both accounts if one account had a good chance of winning it, and I would raise and reraise myself milking my opponents for as many bets as possible.

Casual, non-chalant (sp?) multi-playering (I think Josh falls in this category) seems to drive you crazy. However, I would be much more worried about effective multi-playering in smaller fields.

[bowski44]

And if you have a good hand your basically tripling up. say the pot is 1,000, someone bets 750 one guy raises to 2,100 and then someone reraises 5,000. Your "TEAM" just risked T 7100 to win 1750? Is that what your saying?

[bowski44]

2 vs 7...is it that much advantageous if he's the best player at the table? He'd be better off just playing his game rather than trying stupid isolation plays that could screw both accounts. For every 72 and AA theres always gonna be that situation where one account has AA and the other has KK, boy it sure woulda been nice to double up thru a real opponent rather than the "TEAM". It's not as easy as you guys think. The advantage is good to fold hands that are sharing cards cuz then you know you have a less chance to hit one of ur cards but when you open up your game with both accounts and play [censored] all the time trying to bully the table and steal dead money people are gonna view you as LAG and trap both your accounts for all your chips when they hold an above average hand.

[bowski44]

Chip dumping.... so your hurting the chances of one account to help another? Your still not improving your chances to win the tournament because your just transferring chips from one account to another, probably eliminating your other account just to improve your chances to get a little deeper. But you have to pay twice the entry fee at the beginning anyways. You'll have to explain what "baseballing" is since I haven't heard that term before.

[Proofrock]

So let me distill what I can from the responses and my thoughts regarding the argument so far.

(1) There is some question about the assumption that MTT seating is random (i.e., that it's possible to sit at the same table with yourself at any point in the tournament). There is anecdotal evidence that seating is entirely random at the beginning / with table changes, but nothing hard yet. This, obviously, would have an effect on the validity of the argument (or, rather, drastically alter the frequency that one ends up at one's own table).

(2) OP's calculations jumped from 2 accounts to 3 accounts for the later large field argument -- this increases the number of paired combinations from 1 to 3, thus magnifying the effect by three. Justification for this?

(3) OP's calculation only considered starting arrangements (by design, it seems). Since better players tend to go deeper than weaker players, and there's an unstated assumption that better players are more likely to adopt such measures (correct?), we expect the likelihood of sitting at a table with yourself to increase as the field decreases. If this is the case, then the effects of (2) and (3) may partially cancel each other, yielding an approximately accurate result for somebody using just two accounts (instead of 3, as calculated).

(4) Something that I haven't seen discussed -- is the advantage of sitting with yourself greater early in the tournament, near the bubble, or later in the tournament? i'll with-hold my argument for the relative advantage of each, but the answer to this question may help indicate the degree to which dual-playing would have the most meaningful negative impact on the EV of solo-players. I can elaborate if this is unclear.

[Proofrock]

[ QUOTE ]
2 vs 7...is it that much advantageous if he's the best player at the table? He'd be better off just playing his game rather than trying stupid isolation plays that could screw both accounts. For every 72 and AA theres always gonna be that situation where one account has AA and the other has KK, boy it sure woulda been nice to double up thru a real opponent rather than the "TEAM". It's not as easy as you guys think. The advantage is good to fold hands that are sharing cards cuz then you know you have a less chance to hit one of ur cards but when you open up your game with both accounts and play [censored] all the time trying to bully the table and steal dead money people are gonna view you as LAG and trap both your accounts for all your chips when they hold an above average hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't buy this. Of course a skilled player will take into consideration his/her image when making plays, and of course two people playing together will not *always* be playing off of one another to get others into the pot, the same way a skilled player picks his/her spots rather than stealing every time it's folded to him on the button. That's why i used the phrase "well-timed" in my earlier post.

Using specific hand examples doesn't change the situation -- sure, i'd love to get AA vs. somebody else's KK rather than my own, but I'd also hate to get KK against somebody else's AA. Since this is a MTT, every time you bust somebody else, a new player comes to the table. With double the players on your team and double the information, you can expect to bust other players more quickly (i.e., the number of players you have a chance to play against / amount you can take from others doesn't really decrease, whereas the information and techniques available to you that give you a discernable edge clearly increase).

[rockin]

very nicely done CSC.

[locutus2002]

Hi David,

I have worked some numbers as my gut says that you are way off.

I found the following results given some crude assumptions which I will list later. Anyone interested in exploring this in more depth I will give them my spreadsheets and insights.

2000 player no rebuy structure.
1% chance of being at the same table for avg player
4% chance of being at the same table for advanced player (ROI 2.0)

1000 player no rebuy
2% chance of being at the same table at least once for avg player
9% chance of being at the same table for advanced player (ROI 2.0)

I estimate that these numbers are within 30% accurate.

some qualitative results are important. Obviously the chance of being at the same table increases tremendously as you go deeper with both accounts. Also the duration of the shared table is likely to go up in the later (more probable) portion of the tournament.

The math for 3 accounts is too cumbersome, but should be
much more profitable.

Here are my assumptions:
It's a growth/decay f(x)= T*a^-x
~750 hands for a 2000 player/ ~650 hands for a 1000 player tourney
10 players per table
avg player has exactly survival probability of population (exp decay model (a=1.007)
adv player has double survival probability (a=1.038)


The model does not predict the number of hands that a player will be at the same table with himself
The model does not compensate for any advantage while a player is at the same table with himself.

[ononimo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
- My friend gets deep in a tourney and says, "strass, come help me out". So I go over to his room and talk with him as he plays.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've done this for my brother once. He's a super lag and can always accululate chips but always flames out. So he called me this one particlular night with desparation in his voice and asked for help. I was not in the particular tourney at all and didn't think I did anything wrong by coaching him.

Btw, he won the tourney. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

I think we all have done this. It does go against the letter of the law, but compared to the point sirio makes it's like comparing jaywalking to manslaughter...

It's a matter of degrees...

[/ QUOTE ]

hasn't it been noted by Lee Jones (?) that the "one player to a hand" rule does NOT exist online? if i'm wrong, please correct me.