Daniel Negreneau Verifies His Agreement With Me

[FortunaMaximus]

I don't dispute that maximizing hourly rate is perhaps an optimal approach for low buy-in tournament players playing the Vegas circuit. Good for them. They're more likely to be the grinders who play an unimaginative, fundamentally boring, exploitable game.

I'm with Negreanu solidly where his tournament approach is concerned. Simply because, personally, as a MTT player, I'm capable of breaking out of the TAG/LAG mindset and simply playing the best poker for the situation. And I'm also good enough postflop to maximize my advantages against weaker, predictable opponents.

And as far as the mathematics of the game are concerned, that's why I came to 2p2. I, personally, as I mentioned in a MTT thread in my criticism of the general player's interpretation of the Gigabet dilemma...

Playing perfectly is not unattainable for someone like me. And that's hardly hyperbole or ego-stroking. I have those capabilities and am focusing on the disclipine and the money management skills necessary to get to that level of competition.

Poker, for me, first and foremost, is an intellectual challenge, and I think it's possible for an individual, in theory, to play perfectly. We'll see.

[betgo]

[ QUOTE ]
"Snyder's advice is specifically tailored to B&M dailies/weeklies, repeatable events with no extrinsic value. If you're playing in those, the only appropriate measure of success is hourly rate, and taking early coinflips will increase that."

Finally a correct statement. It WILL increase your hourly rate. That's of debatable importance if busting out early means you go home early. But is important if you will stay to play either a side game or another tournament. Concepts I mention specifically in my book. (Does Snyder?)

The problem is that it is completely off the subject. The ONLY thing that I'm discussing here is that Snyder wrote tons of words about how I was wrong when I say that smaller stacks, above a certain threshold are worth more per chip than larger stacks. Given you arebetter than most of the field. That's stupid even in winner take all events. Stupider still when there are multiple prizes. And when you add in that he claimed that smaller stacks are worth less than than their rightful proportion in head up games you are moving beyond stupid (because the disproof is so elementary and ironclad.)

[/ QUOTE ]
There is a lot I agree with here. First of all, Snyder's arguments are mostly silly, particularly his claim that the player with less chips has an advantage HU. Snyder recognizes that the theory Sklansky and others propound about more chips being worth less does not always hold, but he gives the wrong reasons and tries to argue that the theory is wrong in general, which it is not.

Secondly, the hourly rate issue is important. Even if Sklanky is right in the example about doubling up at the beginning of a $500 tournament that the buyin is worth $1000 to a good player and the double up is worth $800, it would still be advantageous for the player to gamble, because if he busts out, his time is available for something else. This is the way typical ordinary pros and semipros think, particularly online, where they can fire up another tournament, or they are multitabling 7 tournaments at a time or the tournament with a bunch of cash games.

Also, Brunson said in "Super System" that he learned by watching Moss that it was better to avoid big gambles early on and survive at the WSOP. This was counter to Brunson's cash game style. Now Brunson and Moss both had huge skill advantages at the early WSOPs, strong though the field may have been. The average poster in the MTT forum has a significant skill advantage in the tournaments he plays in, but not on the level of Moss and Brunson. Even in the tournaments he plays in, Negreanu has a very large skill advantage over the field, which may lead him to avoid gambling. Also, the survival approach works better in a small event such as early WSOPs than in a large event, such as recent WSOP MEs and many online tournaments.

The other point is the nature of typical late tournament play. Early tournament play tends to be excessively loose, particularly online. Late tournament play tends to be excessively tight and survival oriented. This is particularly true approaching any kind of bubble, where typical play is extremely weak/tight. This extreme weak/tight play leads to strategies which would be incorrect otherwise becaomming correct. It is easier to take adavantage of that tight play with a big stack, particularly since weak/tight players tend to avoid a confrontation with a big stack. Therefore it may be advantageous to gamble to maintain a stack atleast twice the average stack to increase one's ability to acquire more chips.

I think TPFAP really does not address this issue much. At that time, people generally did not play NLHE tournaments full time, and certainly Sklansky didn't. At this point tournament players have more experience with typical conditions and have developed strategies to suit the conditions.

[Beavis68]

[ QUOTE ]

By and large none of the big pros are going to agree, because the big pros play in much less repeatable events with extrinsic value, and it makes sense to try to maximize one's individual event finish in that circumstance.


[/ QUOTE ]

That is only true if they only have a +EV in tournaments, and do not have a bankroll to support them in periods with of no cashes.

If the player is a great poker player, there is no reason to maximize an "individual event" finish at the detriment of long term $EV - if that is what you are saying.

For a great poker player, the gambling isn't over when the tournament ends. Why spend 3 day playing an event to end up with 20k in profit (or a 10k loss) when you can play side games where you have a good positive expectation.

[0evg0]

Great, cEV =/= $EV to an exact degree.

Anyone with any understanding knows that your equity doesn't increase on a scale perfectly similar to your stack.

That is not the debate (or at least isn't the meaningful one), the question is what kind of edge should be passed up. Not just conjecture, math.

2007 WSOP ME
You have t70,000
Avg stack is t22,000
You are Daniel Negreanu

Please put a number on what kind of edge should be passed up on a AIPF decision for a player of his caliber against a field the strength of the average ME. Disregard the hourly rate discussion, I am looking for the answer with the highest $EV specific to this one tournament.

[FortunaMaximus]

Ou, you could certainly pass on some 55/45's, perhaps some 60/40's. But not very often.

[Mickey Brausch]

[ QUOTE ]
Brunson and Moss both had huge skill advantages at the early WSOPs, strong though the field may have been. The average poster in the MTT forum has a significant skill advantage in the tournaments he plays in, but not on the level of Moss and Brunson.

[/ QUOTE ] Here's what Mason Malmuth had to say, a few years ago, about Mr Moss:

***

Posted by
Mason Malmuth
Grand Poobah
Reged: 08/28/02
Loc: Nevada

12/29/03 07:19 PM

Felicia:

I played a bunch of times with him [Johnny Moss], and his poker skills were just awful. It's hard to describe how truly bad he played. My best guess is that he averaged losing $500 to $1,000 a day at the $20-$40 limit, and a number of players got pumped up because of him. To me it's almost a crime the way he is eulogized as some type of special poker person.

By the way, I just happen to know someone, whose name I can't mention and who I don't think you would have heard of anyway, who worked for Johnny Moss as a shift manager at one of the cardrooms that he ran years ago. I think my favorite story is how Moss would empty out the drop boxes in front of the customers on an empty table at the end of a bad day so that he could keep playing poker. (He leased the room so the casino didn't care if he grabbed all the money.)

Best wishes,
Mason

***

Posted by
Mason Malmuth
Grand Poobah
Reged: 08/28/02
Loc: Nevada

12/29/03 09:37 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Mason, by the time you played with Moss he must have been close to 75 and perhaps the game had passed him by. But Doyle Brunson and Benny Binion thought he was top notch, as did others of his generation. And he did win the WSOP three times. And place a bunch of others. He just can't have been as clueless and bad a player over his whole career as you say. Now, maybe he was a clueless player and a nasty one as an old man -- although even here Alvarez played with him and doesn't say it was that bad in his books.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi MRBAA:

I've had this argument made to me before, but I don't believe it. Someone who would call three bets cold because he has an ace in his hand isn't someone who got old and had the game past him by. This was someone with absolutely no clue of how limit hold 'em was played.

I have been told that he just didn't understand limit but was pretty good at no limit. Perhaps that's the case, but I find it hard to believe.

As for his tournament results, I think he was probably an overall loser there as well, but I'm not sure. In the beginning, a few players did well in tournaments simply because they played way too loose. They unknowingly took advantage of better players who didn't know how to adjust to tournament play. I believe Moss was in this group.

And finally, he made most of his lifetime income running cardrooms as opposed to being a successful player. Even when I played against him, he got $200 a day to be the host. He also tried to get two or three dealers fired everyday for dealing him losing hands.

Best wishes,
Mason

***

Posted by
Mason Malmuth
Grand Poobah
Reged: 08/28/02
Loc: Nevada

12/28/03 11:57 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Moss cherished his reputation as honest and trustworthy, and worked to make the games he played in fair for all players.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi StevieG:

I've never read the book but I got a kick out of that quote. Did it have a section about how polite he was at the poker tables, especially to the women?

Best wishes,
Mason

***

[betgo]

[ QUOTE ]
Great, cEV =/= $EV to an exact degree.

Anyone with any understanding knows that your equity doesn't increase on a scale perfectly similar to your stack.

That is not the debate (or at least isn't the meaningful one), the question is what kind of edge should be passed up. Not just conjecture, math.

2007 WSOP ME
You have t70,000
Avg stack is t22,000
You are Daniel Negreanu

Please put a number on what kind of edge should be passed up on a AIPF decision for a player of his caliber against a field the strength of the average ME. Disregard the hourly rate discussion, I am looking for the answer with the highest $EV specific to this one tournament.

[/ QUOTE ]
No it is not a question of what edge should be passed up. Yes, cEV != $EV. However, there is no agreement as to which is greater. I argue that in some cases taking an even gamble is $EV+ and in other cases it is $EV-. Sklansky seems to think it is usually $EV-, whereas Snyder argues it is generally $EV+.

[betgo]

This is off-topic, but didn't Moss win a few million in the 50s playing Nick the Greek HU. Moss was considered the best player in Texas and Nick the best in the northeast. Winning the first WSOP by a vote in also an indication of his strength.

I have no direct knowledge, but I understand by reputation he was atleast as strong as Brunson, Ivey, or anyone around today.

Perhaps at the time Mason wrote this, Moss was pretty old and not at his peak level.

[MLG]

David,
I don't think that any good player is really going to disagree with your assertion. However, what I and lots of other good tournament players will say is that early on in tournaments the divergence betwenn cEV and $EV is so small that it really has little to no impact on strategy other than the very specific case of a truly 0 EV gamble. In order for it to be correct to pass up any edge we woulod need to be able to quantify exactly how much chips decrease in valuse and prove that they decrease enough to turn a normally +EV opportunity into a -EV one. That to my knowledge has never been done.

So while yes there is an important theoretical distinction to be made, practically it his very few applications.

[BigBuffet]

[ QUOTE ]
As to Daniel saying what he thinks I want to hear, you should know that he gave permission for me to write what he said. Not something he would do if he didn't mean it.

[/ QUOTE ]

...maybe he wants a publishing contract with you and Mason [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]