[bustedromo]

So many in this and other 2p2 forums dismiss big tournaments such as WSOP ME and various Stars and FTP large-field large-purse tournaments as "donkaments" not worthy as true tests of world-class poker skill.

Yes, the WSOP ME is just one tournament and bestowing fame on the winner in absence of any other claim is perhaps unjustified and inappropriate. Obviously, in a game with a large luck component, one tourney doesn't mean much.

But does that mean the WSOP ME should be looked down upon as a "donkament", a term that refers to a tourney field chock full of bad players where skill is therefore of discounted value.

I don't think there's any proof that winning vs a field with high % of bad players is any more or less difficult than winning vs a field with high % of good players. Yes, I know the common wisdom is that it is more difficult to win against good players, but I've never seen any rigorous analysis.

The fact that non-world-class players often win huge high-profile tournaments does not necessarily imply that it is easier or harder for a world-class player to win same.

On the one hand, yes, in large fields of bad players, some small % of those shooting the moon in a series of high-risk high-reward EV- plays will amass giant stacks relatively early.

But is this a detriment or a benefit to the world-class player ? One could argue that part of being world-class is knowing how to manipulate such lunatics once they've amassed a larger stack, and some world-class players are better at it than others. One could also argue that an "early lunatic" style is not necessarily lunacy, and that some great tourney players in fact purposefully take a series of EV- shots early and if successful switch gears into table bully mode or pick-off mode as a long-term EV+ strategy over many tournies.

And does the loose-passive nature of many donks have the same effect on all world-class players ? I think not. I think some, like Daniel Negreanu, are much better at manipulating loose-passive players, and that such manipulation is as much a foundation skill component of being world-class as any other skill.

Tournament poker is a game where the income of the pros is provided by the other players. Yes, once you're world-class, you probably have other income streams, but to get to be world-class you have to work up through the pro ranks.

Therefore, it's kind of silly to say that skill in manipulating lesser players, specifically multitudes of bad players, is not a representative skill for a world-class player.

In fact, I would argue that it should be considered *the* representative skill. World-class tournament poker players such as Chris Ferguson and Carlos Mortensen do not avoid "conspiracies of idiocy" as high-stakes cash game pros might and concentrate on one big whale. Rather, they make their livings precisely by welcoming competition from hordes of bad players.

If world-class players had disdain for "donkaments" they wouldn't play them. The fact that most world-class players play many WSOP events, and many big online tournaments, proves that these events in fact are not "donkaments" at all.

I think that what the modern-day WSOP ME and other big-field big-purse tournies do is spread final outcome variance significantly outside the realm many pros are comfortable with. Some learn to adapt their strategies to this variance, others do not and blame "donkaments".