The Freakonomics of Tournaments: A Preview (74s UTG at final table)

[nath]

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I'm just saying that all the people saying that your strategy is brilliant because your image lets you steal more and get paid off on your big hands are talking crazy. YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH. If they start playing back at you more, then stealing becomes less effective but your big hands are more likely to be paid off. End of story.

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Yeah, okay. I'm just getting frustrated. Obviously I'm going to adjust one way or the other to how the table adjusts to me, and probably faster and better.
Some times they play back, some times they don't-- either way I'll adjust my strategy accordingly to continue to gather chips.

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(and Nath, you could turn down "I'm the new Doyle Brunson" routine).

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Look, when people write things that express surprise at ideas THAT I COULD HAVE COPIED WORD FOR FORD FROM SUPER/SYSTEM, I find it a little ridiculous. Here are proven winning no-limit strategies that are very applicable to MTTs that have been around for thirty years and people act like they're ridiculous crazy talk.

same with this idea:

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He just does it, and because he has good instincts, it generally works out for him.

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I play by my instincts because my instincts are sharp from all the time I've spent playing tournaments! Again, instinctual play, Super/System, subconscious translates all the information you've gathered from experience blah blah blah.
I'm doing my best to translate the things I've learned and incorporated into a form that others can understand and hopefully use to improve their game, and I don't think I'm being taken seriously, because my math and logic isn't perfect. I feel like i'm not even getting a "This is intriguing, but..." response so much as a "This is stupid" one.
I'm really frustrated because I've found some things that work for me that almost no one else seems to use, understand, or even consider, and I'm trying to share those ideas. And I'm being dismissed as a crackpot.

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And what I noticed in his replies was this lack of critical self-evaluation which is necessary for moving up to the next level.

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It's true. I never evaluate my own game at all which is why I've been stuck in a rut for the last year.

If you've ever played with me in a cash game you'll see that I do make some rather wild preflop decisions but I make up for it with good decisions and aggressive play on later streets, in addition to the sheer confusion about my holdings that it brings to my opponents. Tournaments don't quite afford the same opportunities for profit, since you're never playing as deep, but aggression and confusion still lead to larger mistakes in your opponents. Add in the fact that the way to be a profitable tournament player is to shoot for first place every time, and the pace at which online tournaments progress, and you might realize that I have adjusted my strategy in a way that makes a loose and wild style profitable.
I have simply accepted the fact that as long as structures are fast a wilder style more willing to take chances is going to get the big money more often. Occasionally this style results in plays that individually are not +EV or mathematically perfect but have contributed to my overall winning strategy.
I'm winning for a reason, and I think it's because there's more to tournament strategy than many people think-- the "hidden side", hence the title of my original post.
I'm trying to uncover that; maybe I should go back to doing it on my own time.

[A_PLUS]

Hey man, I can understand while you are frustrated. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said

"I don't think I'm being taken seriously, because my math and logic isn't perfect."

I think this is a flaw on our part, that stems from Mason on down. It is a very mathy/logic type of place.

I am very interested in discussing your overall style in greater detail. I think there is some very important math behind it, I just dont think anyone is thinking about it in the right way.


Also,
I only made the Doyle Brunson comment, b/c I think your post came across as cocky, and that was part of the reason, the thread turned away from what I thought it should have been about (your style).

[registrar]

I've refrained from involvement in this post, which I have enjoyed immensely, perhaps because I'm a little ashamed of the man-love thing I seem have going on for Nath, who is by far my favourite poster on this site.

But now I want to say two things.

Firstly, Nath, there's really no need to get itchy. Discourse with learned sceptics will temper the truth you are forging.

Secondly, the instinct thing is crucial. Posting on this site has helped me analyse my play and I play a lot better now against thinking players. However, I used to win a lot more money before I started posting here, though that could have been simply beginner's rush.

I am not in any way joking when I say that all of my seven tournie cashes over $2k have been under the influence of magic mushrooms. Sadly, it's months until Autumn and I have no more left. So now I'm trying to learn how to play poker.

Magic mushrooms can, under the right conditions, bestow superhuman powers of concentration and, dare I say it (well, Doyle did), extra-sensory perception.

The best part of my play is final table. My recollection of these final tables is hazy at best and, when subsequently considered, not a lot of the play makes a lot of sense. However, and I don't think this is just luck, it is amazingly effective. Random, overarching agression does turn even the best poker players into gibbering idiots when a lot of money is at stake.

So, I like the fact that Nath has taken the time to post this hand and generate this discussion and I am happy to at least consider the possibility that the correct application of a sequence of bizarre, -EV plays is, or can be, cumulatively +$EV and that, furthermore, study of the phenomena may yield a pattern, a fundamental law of poker, if you will.

[A_PLUS]

I really hope you are serious, b/c if you are. The man-love you feel for Nath, is nothing. That my friends, was a great post

[nath]

i used to play a lot more on a variety of drugs, but for various reasons don't know. It is true that some of them can provide you with uncommon levels of perception and concentration, but you can also learn these things, and not have to deal with the negative repercussions.

But yeah, in poker as in life, there's a whole host of things going on underneath the surface, that you can do a lot with if you realize them, tap into them.

[woodguy]

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i used to play a lot more on a variety of drugs,

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My last 4 wins were all after smoking a nice fat bowl.

Good Canadian hydro too.

I think I just concentrate and anticipate better.

Given the fact I have to work every morning, have to interact successfully with my wife and not be unmotivated in the majority of my life, I can't blow a bowl for every tourney.

Variance sucks.


Regards,
Woodguy

[registrar]

Thank you very much. I was serious in intent and content, a little tongue in cheek in presentation.

Adanthar posted similarly, on a different topic, a month or so back. The issue was big laydowns when you know you are behind. Becuase of the hand he chose to illustrate his point of view, the thread wasn't particularly successful. Respondents got caught up in the specifics of the hand, quite reasonably as this was the exemplar provided, and the quite valid point was made that if a newbie no-post had folded those aces (I think it was), he would have been crucified. The discussion didn't really get started. At the time, I thought this was a useful issue to raise. Online players can defend any play mathematically through pot odds and ranges but, sometimes, we know that it is right to fold a hand nomatter what the odds we're being laid because we know we are beaten and yet the hand range and equity calculations we make mean that we must call. I was sorry that that discussion was not more productive.

I am also sorry that this discussion has not been more fruitful. I think it has greater potential, if I am understanding the terms of the argument and I will now restate these terms in an attempt to move the discussion forward.

Instinct and aggression defines Nath's style. It is unquestionably a profitable style. Possibly Nath is a poker savant. Possibly he is just extremely lucky (after all, someone has to be luckiest card player of all time). However, it is also possible that the the moves he makes, while -EV hand by hand, are +$EV over the course of a final table and that this intriguing possibility warrants further investigation.

It appears that the final table of this event has been conclusively investigated and that Nath's hypothesis is not born out by the phenomena but I suggest that Nath, for his own sake and the general good of the forum, does not let this lie and analyses other FT hand histories to see if he can quantify his theories from a mathematical perspective.

[DocMartin]

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That's sweet, because the next time you're on the button you're bound to have aces.

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Yeah, that's the problem with my strategy. I never actually get aces, so I'm never able to take advantage of my image, so it all ends up being for nothing, which is why I'm a huge loser in MTTs.

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I aspire to be a huge loser in MTTs like Nath.

[FoxwoodsFiend]

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nath,

with an m of 3, your range seems totally off to me. He only plays 21% of hands? yeah right!

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Against an UTG raise? If he was the open raiser, he might be pushing virtually anything. It seems like he might push more, and against me, he probably should, but I couldn't think of a better range to assign him. I suppose you could stretch it into even weaker aces, some of the suited kings, and such, but I still don't think he's taking, say, 98s, and pushing it over my raise.

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Nath,

If you've been as active as you say you've been, I can't see SB not pushing 89s given all the dead money from the blinds and antes and your wide range.

Or at least, obviously people make all sorts of awful folds but the amount of crazy action I've seen shortstacks give from the BB leads me to think you're seriously overestimating how narrow his hand range is.

P.S. Just saw my post was mainly already covered. What I did realize in reading after the post I just quoted was that you seem to be really defensive and pointing to how you've had a lot of success. I've also had a lot of success in tournaments, albeit in a smaller sample size than you have had.

I, to put it mildly, do some batso nutty [censored]. I often get it in with the worse of it, I make crazy resteals, etc. What does this have to do with your post? It's that when I'm running well and going up against 33 and unwittingly getting coinflips with junk, busting a shortish stack's AA with my 67o, and otherwise doing really well with my eccentric plays I feel that I'm playing like a god, understanding the game better than my opponents, and playing for the final table.

When I run my 58s into QQ and don't get there a few times in a row, I start to question just how profitable some of my nuttier moves are and whether I was just running very well. And that's the problem with MTTs: it's possible that you have many moves that are -cEV up your sleeve like I probably do. But in tournaments all it takes is 3 or 4 big suckouts plus a few races/dominating situations and now you've got an insane chip stack and are easily crushing the field.

And that's kind of the point: it's easier to be results-oriented in MTTs than any other form of poker (Badugi/Chinese Poker/2-7 notwithstanding) because the positive effects of getting lucky in a particular hand get so distorted/inflated by the top-heavy pay-outs and the importance of having a big stack.

So basically, when you respond with "but look at my results" or "screw the math, I'm talking about a general way of thinking that's not specific to this hand" what I read is a fuzzy way of thinking with only the barest, most abstract methodological justification for a move that is almost definitely reckless and I wonder how many more moves like that you pull.

I should obviously clarify that previous to this thread I had no idea you played tournaments at all, so I obviously have no insight into how you play, but I'm just responding to the general tone of your posts.

[nath]

People talk themselves out of doing the right thing all the time. It's easy to say in our cool analysis of the situation that pushing 98s vs. me is right there. But in the heat of battle it's easier to say that you'll fold and get me next time when you have a real hand, or you'll just wait to open push.

(And if you're the big blind there isn't a hell of a lot of dead money anyway given how small the antes online are.)