An Unfortunate Asymmetry

[David Sklansky]

The folowing syndrome occurs in all no limit tournaments but most especially on the first day of the 10K WSOP:

Most players, even the not so good ones, play quite carefully when the blinds are small compared to the stacks. In other words it would take a pretty bad "cold deck" to get them to commit anywhere near all their chips. When you draw a table filled with opponents like these, you have very little chance of ending the day broke, or even with less than the 10,000 you started with. On the other hand, if your table is not one of those that is going to be broken up that day, your chances of accumulating something signicant is much smaller than a player who is either at a wilder table or is destined to be moved one or more times.

If you are moved to another table, the average stack size of your opponents is automatically more than 10,000. Perhaps a lot more. Furthermore, the fact that players have been eliminated tends to mean that the whole table is gambling more. Even it they weren't, tight players with 15,000 in front of them are more profitable to be facing, if you are an expert, than ones with less. If the table is in fact volatile, it feeds on itself as more players go broke and those experts lucky enough to be brought to it (or lucky enough to start with a volatile table that doesn't break up) have a big edge.

Meanwhile those top players who draw more timid players on tables not broken up, have to content themselves with growing their chips to between twenty and thirty thousand that first day, with the only consolation being that they were almost certain to survive and that the real action doesn't start until the second day anyway.