The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Snyder...

[Radar_O'Reilly]

I hadn't seen DJ's post #6792208 when I replied to the same post by Mason as he. DJ, I agree with your post.

[Mason Malmuth]

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It is correct to make this same play in the green zone if you are likely to win with this play.

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There is no question that many people begin to play too tightly in tournaments, and if that's the case then raising with a seven-deuce can become correct. By the way, if someone is playing like this in a deep stacked no limit cash game, it can be right there as well.

MM

[Al Mirpuri]

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That is because players have been misled, by Mason for one, about the seriousness of the disadvantage associated with a short stack in a fast tournament.


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I really don't think this is true. It's never been my style to mislead people. But thanks for the insult.

MM

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Mason,

It is possible to mislead people without being malicious. The poster obviously thinks you are wrong about a point but no one is saying you are not sincere or convinced of your argument. To say you have 'misled' people is not by definition an insult.

Best Wishes,

Al Mirpuri.

[Radar_O'Reilly]

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"But you should always keep in mind, even in slow tournaments, that anyone who builds a significant early chip lead has a big advantage over anyone with a lesser stack who is playing with equal skill."


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Mason quote: I disagree. If Player A has an M of 20 and Player B has an M of 10, then this is probably correct. But if the Ms were 100 and 50 respectively, I don't think there would be much of an advantage, and you essentially state this in your second paragraph.

Also, and left out of your commments, is what is the price you pay attempting to get that chip lead. If it means you bust out more frequently, it might not be worth it.

Many of the better players today do play a fast small ball strategy trying to get that chip lead. But there are also many imitators who would be much better off if they slowed down.

MM

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A player with an M100 stack has twice the stack of the M50 player. Chapter 10 of The Poker Tournament Formula (starting on p. 173) shows that the player with twice the stack has an enormous advantage over the smaller stack all other things being equal. On p. 174, Arnold states: "It can be shown mathematically that Player A (the player with twice the stack) will win exactly twice as often as Player B." (Again, he states that this is the case only when they play with equal skill.) Although the discussion about the big stack's advantage occurs in the context of rebuy advice, the math behind the advantage of a big stack over a small one stands alone. If Player B, who has the smaller stack, cannot outplay Player A, then Player B can only win by being dealt superior cards (i.e., luck). Since all luck is evenly distributed over time, Player B cannot beat Player A over the long run, unless he can outplay Player A.

It's true that an M10 stack is further disadvantaged by the fact that the player no longer has access to a full range of poker skills.

But even though the M50 player still has access to a full range of poker skills, he is at a severe disadvantage to the M100 stack all other things being equal .

Chapter 10 of The Poker Tournament Formula shows that the big stack will have an advantage over the shorter stack even if the player with the big stack had to pay more to get that stack, all other factors being equal, as long as he didn't have to pay twice as much to get twice the stack.

So, if you bust out twice as often playing a fast strategy as you do playing a conservative strategy, Mason would be correct that a fast strategy is wrong, all other things being equal.

But the fast strategy in The Poker Tournament Formula does not increase bust-outs. It certainly does not cause you to spend twice as much for your chips. It's not a Kill Phil all-in type of strategy. It is a strategy designed to avoid confrontations that cause bust-outs. Instead, you make your bigger stack by theft--by avoiding confrontations that cause bust-outs. You're not pushing all in, so when danger presents itself, you get out of the way. Again, it comes down to the fact that there is far more to poker skill than matching your starting hands.

The book makes the case that if you try to use a conservative strategy in a fast tournament, you will have many more confrontations than if you play a fast strategy. More confrontations mean more bust-outs. It is far more risky to play the hand than it is to play the man.

After three years of winning with a high edge at fast tournaments, Arnold wrote, on p. 272, that 20% of the chips you make with his strategy will come from pre-flop steals. He writes: "...40% of the chips you earn on your way to the final table will come from postflop position steals. I have made it to a number of final tables in fast tournaments without ever having had a legitimate postflop hand, and without ever having shown down my cards. In fact, if I make a final table, I will only rarely have shown down more than one or two hands in the prior hours of play."

On the same page, he states: "On your way to the final table, only about 40% of the chips you acquire will come from strong hands that hold up. In fact, when you fail to make it into the money, in almost every case you will go out on a strong hand, where you get your money all-in as a strong favorite, but then get sucked out on... I have thought many times that if I could simply throw away all of my good hands, and restrict my play to stealing pots with trash hands, I'd get a lot further a lot more often."

The central argument of the book is that, in a fast tournament, the risk of being blinded off with conservative strategy is far greater than the risk of busting out with a good fast play strategy. That is because, with a conservative strategy, you will too often get short-stacked and be forced into more all-in confrontations.

This is how optimal strategy is affected by tournament structure.

[Radar_O'Reilly]

Mason: [ QUOTE ]
So let's say I'm on the button with a small pair and no one else is in. In a slow tournament you're saying this might be a call, but it is definitely a raise in a fast tournament. I'm saying that if the Ms are high, it might be a call since this gives you a better chance of winning all the chips, but if the Ms are low, it becomes a clear raise. Notice that in my case, the Ms are usually going to be low in the fast tournament. But just in case they are not, your advice is not to be a fully functional poker player.

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My response: This, in fact, is an excellent example. But I do not agree with the conclusion you draw from it.

It is true that Arnold's basic strategy says that, with a competitive chip stack in late position and no one else in, "Raise with any two cards" (p. 157). However, he qualifies that on p. 84, in his chapter on position basic strategy, with the comment: "Although the basic position strategy is to raise, it is generally best to mix up your play on the button with raises and calls." He explains that the reason for mixing it up is for camo--to disguise your constant theft. I do not disagree that a small pair might be one of the better hands with which to call instead of raise to mix up your play.

The reason the basic strategy is to raise in a fast tournament rather than call is because you are too unlikely to get a set with those small pairs frequently enough to get the return on investment you need to keep up with the rapidly declining M. You are unlikely to get a set because sets occur too infrequently, and in fast tournaments you simply do not have the same time luxury to wait for trapping hands. Because the blinds are going up so quickly, you have to have a better chance of making money now.

When you are short-stacked, the position basic strategy provides on p. 163 that you raise in late position with all pairs from 2s to queens, so once again, we simply agree on what happens when you're short.

In summary, optimal strategy with this small pair in late position, no one in, is different in a fast tournament because you don't have the time to wait to trap with a set, and you can't afford to throw chips into a pot without a higher likelihood of winning. It isn't that the advice in the book is not to be a fully functional poker player. It's that in a fast tournament, a fully functioning poker player will choose a different strategy and skill set, even when M is high, because M is always so rapidly declining.

Mason quoting me: [ QUOTE ]
But the minute a conservative style is a viable option with one structure, and not a viable option with a different tournament structure, their assertion is wrong.

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Mason: [ QUOTE ]
But a conservative or Green Zone style is a viable option with both structures (and Green Zone style doesn't have to be conservative). For some reason you're assuming its not and then are arguing your conclusion as the correct answer. I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way.

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My response: The Green Zone strategy provided by Harrington is significantly more conservative by any definition than the strategy in The Poker Tournament Formula. Just to give one specific example among many: Arnold's strategy is based to a much greater degree than Harrington's on bluffing and stealing. Harrington's advice is to make a bluff (including stealing the blinds) only once every 50-60 hands. I do not see how you can say that Harrington's advice is not significantly more conservative than Arnold's. With the strategy in The Poker Tournament Formula, you steal a pot approximately once per round (every ten hands).

And since The Poker Tournament Formula demonstrates that you cannot make sufficient money to stay in the Green Zone in fast tournaments without radically increasing your bluffing beyond what Harrington advises, the book shows that tournament structure has influenced strategy options.

The argument by no means starts from a conclusion that Harrington's Green Zone strategy is not viable in fast tournaments. It starts by making a case that Harrington's Green Zone strategy is not viable in fast tournaments. The origin of that case, as Arnold has explained in a separate thread here, was direct experience in fast tournaments that showed him that conservative strategy players were losing, and that the consistent winners were players using fast strategies. The analysis in The Poker Tournament Formula began with the question of why that was so.

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Specifically, what Arnold is saying is that while you can use either conservative or fast strategy in a slow event, fast tournament structures require that you abandon conservative strategies in order to stay in the green zone.

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Mason: [ QUOTE ]
I suspect that Arnold would be a little embarrassed by this statement. Let's say you have a lot of chips and an opponent has a lot of chips. Furthermore, let's say that if you play conservatively, you might win the pot less often, but have a better chance of getting all his chips. Wouldn't that strategy give you a better chance of staying in the Green Zone?

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The point Arnold makes in The Poker Tournament Formula is that it is wrong in a fast tournament to sit there playing conservatively with the thought that you have time to trap that guy. The reason it is wrong is because you don't have time to trap anyone. What he says is (p. 234): "For you to sit there thinking, 'Wait until I have a really big hand--then I'll show them!' is just a fantasy. By the time you get that big hand--if you get that big hand--you won't have enough chips left to show anybody anything. You'll just be the short stack that got lucky in time to double up, so the sharks can start taking bites out of you again."

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1. They have to show mathematically that fast play will not more frequently keep you in the green zone in fast tournaments than conservative play.


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Mason: [ QUOTE ]
If you're in a tournament stituation where fast play is more likely to keep you in the Green Zone, then I agree, go ahead and play fast. But you're saying that in these so called fast-tournaments fast play will always be best. So for me to prove you wrong, all I need is one counter example. It's in my first comment above.

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Okay, I appreciate the response, and I'd like to refer you back to my answer to your example above. While a small pair in late position with no one else in might be a good choice for mixing up your play (for the reasons you provide), the optimal overall basic strategy for this hand is indeed different in fast tournaments for the reasons I provided above. The M in fast tournaments is simply declining to rapidly to allow much speculative play.

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2. They have to show that Arnold's math is wrong in Chapter 10 of The Poker Tournament Formula, where he shows the mathematical basis of the edge a big chip stack has over a small chip stack in a tournament.


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Mason: [ QUOTE ]
This is just a silly statement. I really don't think that anyone here believes (or anyone for that manner) that having a small stack is superior than having a big stack. If that was the case, people would be trying to get broke, not accumulate chips.

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Okay, that's great. We have no disagreement on Point 2. We've narrowed down our grounds for disagreement.

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3. They have to show that you are not limited in your skill options when you sink below the green zone.


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Mason: [ QUOTE ]
But you are limited in your skill options when you sink below the Green Zone. That was the whole point of all those pages in Harrington II.

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That's great. Then we are also in agreement on Point 3.

That means our only point of disagreement is Point 1. I'll look forward to reading your response to my arguments above regarding Point 1.

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I have to tell you, this is absurd. A long run advantage is based on playing with an advantage. You play with the biggest advantage if you are a fully functional poker player--that is, in the green zone--and in order to stay in the green zone in fast tournaments, you have to choose a strategy that will keep you there.

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Mason: [ QUOTE ]
Sorry, but I like to give counter-examples. It goes back to my career as a professional statistician. Suppose you are under the gun with an M of exactly 20 and you are dealt the 7[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]2[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. The only strategy that will keep you in the Green Zone is one that has you playing this hand. But that doesn't mean you should do so, and this would be true no matter what the tournament speed is.

On the other hand, if your M was 3, then the best play just might be to move all in. Notice that tournament speed has no impact here either.

MM

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The Poker Tournament Formula does not advise just going and playing any two cards any time you are in danger of going out of the Green Zone on the next hand. It simply provides a more aggressive strategy for preventing going out of the Green Zone in fast tournaments as frequently as you would with a more conservative strategy. The optimal overall strategy for meeting this goal has everything to do with tournament speed.

The book also does not make any type of claim that you will never go out of the Green Zone with the fast-play strategy recommended. It provides short stack strategies precisely because it is impossible to stay in the Green Zone all of the time in every tournament. Sometimes you will suffer bad beats on your good hands. Sometimes your bluffs will run into premium hands and you will have to give up the pot.

The book does not make the case, and I have not made the case, that you should suddenly play 72o badly in an insane attempt to stay in the Green Zone every hand no matter what the cost. It's about adjusting overall strategy for tournament structure to get the most possible time in the Green Zone.

[Radar_O'Reilly]

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That is because players have been misled, by Mason for one, about the seriousness of the disadvantage associated with a short stack in a fast tournament.


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I really don't think this is true. It's never been my style to mislead people. But thanks for the insult.

MM

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Mason,

It is possible to mislead people without being malicious. The poster obviously thinks you are wrong about a point but no one is saying you are not sincere or convinced of your argument. To say you have 'misled' people is not by definition an insult.

Best Wishes,

Al Mirpuri.

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Exactly. Since Mason has worked his butt off, often under trying circumstances, to provide good information to poker players, I did not mean to imply that he is some kind of gambling huckster.

But I am trying to say that the point is worth arguing over, even though it's taking up a lot of everyone's time. It is not, as some in this thread have suggested, a squabble over money.

It is also not, as a poster suggested, that I am some kind of Tammy Wynette standing by her man.

I believe that The Poker Tournament Formula alerts players to a problem with using Harrington's Green Zone strategy in fast tournaments. It is my personal experience that this problem will have players playing at a disadvantage in fast tournaments. This means that I believe the problem is costing players money.

That makes it worth the time and effort of going through this argument.

[Mason Malmuth]

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A player with an M100 stack has twice the stack of the M50 player. Chapter 10 of The Poker Tournament Formula (starting on p. 173) shows that the player with twice the stack has an enormous advantage over the smaller stack all other things being equal.

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Radar:

I really thing you need to take a deep breath and relax. I think everyone knows that you prefer to have twice as many chips.

When you have an M of 100, you are, according to the Harrington books, a fully functional poker player. The same is true for when you have an M of 50. So how they can each play a particular hand will be roughly the same.

On the other hand, if you have an M of 10, you are not a fully functional poker player, but with an M of 20 you still are (but just barely). Now how each of these players can play a hand will not be the same. The player with the smaller stack is limited in his options and will be at a disadvantage relative to how he would play this hand if he had twice as many chips.

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"It can be shown mathematically that Player A (the player with twice the stack) will win exactly twice as often as Player B." (Again, he states that this is the case only when they play with equal skill.)

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Again, this is something that was shown over 20 years ago. It's not unique to Arnold's book. See the essay "Should You Wait?" in Sklansky on Poker by David Sklansky.

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If Player B, who has the smaller stack, cannot outplay Player A, then Player B can only win by being dealt superior cards (i.e., luck). Since all luck is evenly distributed over time, Player B cannot beat Player A over the long run, unless he can outplay Player A.


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Not quite. Since it is a fair game, Player B must win his fair share of times. For example, if B has 20 percent of the chips and he and A are equally skilled, Player B can expect to win 20 percent of the time. Also, and this is the statistician in me, I'm not sure that all luck is evenly distributed over time. All you can say is that you expect all future luck to be evenly distributed.

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So, if you bust out twice as often playing a fast strategy as you do playing a conservative strategy, Mason would be correct that a fast strategy is wrong, all other things being equal.


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I'm not sure this is completely accurate either, but I'll need to think it through. It would be correct if the tournament was winner take all, but they're not. They are what we call percentage payback tournaments, and making payments to other places besides first comes at the expense of first place. So my educated guess without thinking it completely through means that the player with twice the stack at some point in a tournament who tends to bust out twice as often in an effort to get that stack is at a disadvantage expectation wise relative to the other player with half the stack as long as that (other) player still has enough chips to be a fully functional player. (It's a little out of date, but there is discussion of this in my Gambling Theory book on pages 210 and 211.)

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But the fast strategy in The Poker Tournament Formula does not increase bust-outs. It certainly does not cause you to spend twice as much for your chips. It's not a Kill Phil all-in type of strategy. It is a strategy designed to avoid confrontations that cause bust-outs. Instead, you make your bigger stack by theft--by avoiding confrontations that cause bust-outs. You're not pushing all in, so when danger presents itself, you get out of the way. Again, it comes down to the fact that there is far more to poker skill than matching your starting hands.


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I don't have a problem with this. But it has nothing to do with tournament speed. It is a strategy that does well where in general the Ms are low.

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The central argument of the book is that, in a fast tournament, the risk of being blinded off with conservative strategy is far greater than the risk of busting out with a good fast play strategy. That is because, with a conservative strategy, you will too often get short-stacked and be forced into more all-in confrontations.

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The central argument of the book should be that when the Ms are low players are in general in far more jeapordy than they realize. Thus even if your chip position seems good relative to the other players, you will still need to make moves to attempt to keep your M at an acceptable level. Once this is the case waiting for a good hand is the equivalent of playing badly.

MM

[Mason Malmuth]

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Since Mason has worked his butt off, often under trying circumstances, to provide good information to poker players, I did not mean to imply that he is some kind of gambling huckster.

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Thank you for clarifying because it sure didn't come across that way to me.

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It is also not, as a poster suggested, that I am some kind of Tammy Wynette standing by her man.


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I missed that one. But it would have been better if you had immediately identified yourself as Arnold's wife.

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I believe that The Poker Tournament Formula alerts players to a problem with using Harrington's Green Zone strategy in fast tournaments. It is my personal experience that this problem will have players playing at a disadvantage in fast tournaments. This means that I believe the problem is costing players money.


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You seem to have a misunderstanding of exactly what it means to be in the Green Zone. From Harrington II page 129:

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The Green Zone: You have 20 or more times the pot. This is where you want to spend as much of the tournament as possible. All styles are open to you. You can be conservative, aggressive, or super-aggressive, and switch back and forth among them as you wish. All moves are available. You can watch a raise and a reraise, and come over the top of both players, and still have plenty of chips left for another move later in the hand. In the Green Zone you’re a fully-functional poker player, and it’s worth taking some risks to stay here

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MM

[WhiskeyR]

Hello,

This is my first post on this forum, and this has been quite an interesting discussion.

It doesn't require much comment from me, but there is one point that must be addressed.

Mason - why do you feel it is acceptable to address Radar O'Reilly by what you think his/her/their first name is?

This may seem acceptable to most here - since as poker players you experience no heat from blackjack pits. But for a professional gambler it is important to remain as anonymous as possible. In the blackjack world almost no one would publically give clues to someone else's identity, even if bitter rivals.

While you may consider it a courtesy or friendly - this seems quite irresponsible when anonymity is a requirement rather than a mere weakness.

[Tankado]

Radar,

If you are playing against weak players, you will have a big edge being a good player. But it has nothing to do with the style you play or the pace of the tournament. If your opponents are playing too weak-tight the best strategy is to steal lots of little pots. But this is true for cash games as for every kind of tournaments. If you are playing against intelligent opponents playing your fast tournament the “action” Dan Harrington style of play, you will have a very tough time staying super-aggressive.

The super-aggressive style is far from being ideal in terms of game theory. You are trading mistakes (p178 Sklansky’s NLHTP): the small ones before the flop (playing too many hands) for expected bigger mistakes from your opponents after the flop (for example failing to protect their hand or letting them bluff out from the pots). You just exploit their weaknesses, which is always right. This has nothing to do with the pace of the tournament. Intelligent tight aggressive opponents can easily adapt to and exploit your style of play.

Coming to the final table having a bigger stake is always more fun and gives you a higher chance of winning the tournament. But assuming two equally skilled players come to the final table with different stack sizes means only, the one with the shorter stack was just less lucky (with his opponents, cards, bluff timing). It has nothing to do with the style of play you choose being in the green zone.

You say Harrington is bluffing too little. There is the perfect (in game theory) frequency of bluffing depending on bluffing size. This is easy to calculate and is shown in TOP. If your bluffing frequency is too high or too low, its very exploitable. Again, it has nothing to do with the pace of the tournament.

I am very interested how you can prove this wrong?