Re: A5s in blind battle.
 

[ QUOTE ]
While you are right that you should be considering exactly how much ev you are gaining my upping your varience, you should very very rarely (especially early in a tournament) be passing up ev to reduce risk.

[/ QUOTE ]

For really vague reasons that I am unable to articulate in any meaningful way, I think it is possible that the 'passing up small edges' argument needs to be reconsidered in view of the tougher but more standardised fields we have seen over the past year or so.

I also think that many players (or quite possibly only me) become sloppy - assuming that the most +cEV play is the best play. This is obviously usually the case, but not always.

There are a load of tired cliches (tournament life on the line, pick a better spot etc.) that we've all considered many times before. But what I haven't seen discussed, more or less at all, is how the assumptions drawn from the arguments in the archive (don't pass up small edges) are affected by the fact that far more of any given field, certainly on Stars, are more or less competent, less intimidated by a large stack, have less concern for their tournament life but are now exploitable in different ways.

I don't think anything in this thread particularly addresses this, which is a pity.

Re: A5s in blind battle.
 

[ QUOTE ]

An analogy from trading:

[/ QUOTE ] I think your fundamental error is using trading as an analogy for tournament poker. A more apt analogy is to compare trading to cash poker. You can stay in the game as long as you have cash, and there can be multiple big winners and multiple big losers.

For example, in a cash game, if you have a bankroll of $10000 and are facing an all-in bet of $1000 with an expected return of $1, then you would be stupid to take the bet. Losing that bet will probably have a large negative influence on your future earnings. In cash, variance is your enemy when it threatens your bankroll.

But early in a tournament, if you are faced with an all-in bet with an expected return of 1 chip, then you almost certainly should take it. Losing your stack is not the big a deal (most tournaments you lose your stack with no gain). Doubling up early is huge, and can have a large positive influence on the EV of future hands. In tournaments, variance is your friend even when it threatens your entire stack.

At the final table of the tournament, however, the dynamics can change and your ideas might have more merit, where a bet that is +cEV can also be -$EV at the same time.

Re: A5s in blind battle.
 

[ QUOTE ]
For example, in a cash game, if you have a bankroll of $10000 and are facing an all-in bet of $1000 with an expected return of $1

[/ QUOTE ]

Meh, you probably shouldn't be playing with $1000 on the table to begin with if your BR is 10K. In normal cases taking a ~0EV proposition for a stack in a cash game can be good or bad, depending on different considerations.

Re: A5s in blind battle.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
While you are right that you should be considering exactly how much ev you are gaining my upping your varience, you should very very rarely (especially early in a tournament) be passing up ev to reduce risk.

[/ QUOTE ]



For really vague reasons that I am unable to articulate in any meaningful way, I think it is possible that the 'passing up small edges' argument needs to be reconsidered in view of the tougher but more standardised fields we have seen over the past year or so.

I also think that many players (or quite possibly only me) become sloppy - assuming that the most +cEV play is the best play. This is obviously usually the case, but not always.

There are a load of tired cliches (tournament life on the line, pick a better spot etc.) that we've all considered many times before. But what I haven't seen discussed, more or less at all, is how the assumptions drawn from the arguments in the archive (don't pass up small edges) are affected by the fact that far more of any given field, certainly on Stars, are more or less competent, less intimidated by a large stack, have less concern for their tournament life but are now exploitable in different ways.

I don't think anything in this thread particularly addresses this, which is a pity.

[/ QUOTE ]

well if the players are better overall, you should be willing to take more high-variance risks early on since your skill advantage is not as big.

Re: A5s in blind battle.
 

reg,
all those factors can change what the most +EV play is, but they do not change that we should still be taking the most +EV course of action.

Re: A5s in blind battle.
 

[ QUOTE ]
Baltostar,
Risk management is borderline irrelevant in MTTs.

[/ QUOTE ]

What do you guys think of the idea that certain stack sizes maintain an "x" value in ability to steal chips w/o showdown.

Does maintaining that value versus getting involved in borderline high variance ev+ or ev- situations have merit?

Clearly though this hand villians calling range according to op, is wider than balto assumes.

fwiw I don't really play much higher levels so maybe the edge of gaining chips w/o showdown is smaller at high stakes

Joseph

Re: A5s in blind battle.
 

My post is rubbish. I am totally unable to articulate, or even properly conceptualise, this idea. Every so often I read a post that awakens the feeling that there is a better approach that there is a better way of playing MTTs than simply calculating exploiting the cEV of each hand we are dealt. It kind of ties in to Nath's Freaknomics thread, and various other threads, and a particularly good trip I had last year before I went on a hot streak.

As I say, I can't express what I mean but, in short, I do find this idea of manipulating volatility and a pf risk management strategy interesting and potentially useful.

DJK, FWIW, when talking about improved fields, it's more the standardising of the way that improved field plays that I find interesting. It's not 'everyone's better therefore I should take more flips because I have less overall edge' but something more like 'everyone's going to play the same so I will profit more overall by deviating from the pattern in considered way'. To use an STT analogy, the same formula of playing tight early and then going batshit on the bubble is still profitable, as it was when I started playing, but I think that this suggests that other strategies are more profitable nowadays when 6 and not 1 of the table is playing essentially the same strategy (if perhaps not as optimally).

Anyway, these are inchoate ramblings and I will shut up now. Baltostar has not made me see the light but I'm willing to give him the chance.

FWIW, I don't know much about stock trading but it doesn't seem especially relevant to MTT poker.

Re: A5s in blind battle.
 

[ QUOTE ]
You cannot, simply cannot, be a significant winner in MTTs if you don't, rather occasionally, "run the risk of letting a single hand take control of your tournament". OF course, strong players know how to pick these hands and spots, bad players don't.

[/ QUOTE ]

This isn't really what I'm getting at.

There is a big difference between letting/allowing/being drawn into and pursuing.

If at a time when the pot size implies small-to-moderate damage to your stack, you mis-perceive the risk of stakes-escalation, and you **allow** yourself to be drawn into playing the hand bigger simply because you perceive that it is marginal EV+, you soon may find yourself pot committed in a marginal situation (some combination of marginal hand, marginal read, marginal EV+, etc.)

The above is massively different than **pursuing** a situation where you believe you can escalate the stakes and remain nicely EV+ or even improve your EV+.

That's why I am advocating some sort of warning/alarm system based on reasonable expectations for goals/scenarios. It's all about protecting the player from himself.

Re: A5s in blind battle.
 

[ QUOTE ]
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related to ?

SAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAZZZZZZZZAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRR

[/ QUOTE ]
related to SALAD BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

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Re: A5s in blind battle.
 

[ QUOTE ]
But early in a tournament, if you are faced with an all-in bet with an expected return of 1 chip, then you almost certainly should take it. Losing your stack is not the big a deal (most tournaments you lose your stack with no gain). Doubling up early is huge, and can have a large positive influence on the EV of future hands. In tournaments, variance is your friend even when it threatens your entire stack.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Completely utterly wrong. Wrong.

For lack of a better name, I dub this the "Greg Raymer school of EV+" and it is wrong.

I engaged a super smart poker player friend of mine in this argument and I played devil's advocate.

The way this line goes is you should never pass up EV+ because there's always another tournament.

His response was, "Yeah but there's not an infinite amount of time in your life and most of us don't have an infinite amount of money."

That statement effectively kills the argument for absolute chip gain. More precisely, your time and bankroll risk to play in a tournament is worth more than 0.1% EV+

And here's what kills the argument for stack utility gain :

Utility/chip is an inverse function of stack size. (Sklansky was the first to prove this: if you accumulate 100% of tournament chips you do not receive 100% of buy-ins as your prize).

Obviously, your stack as a whole does gain utility from an early double-up, but it's less than double the utility of your original stack. If you're only 0.1% EV+ to double-up you are overpaying for the expected utility gained.