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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.

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Cool! Following your sound logic, I am joining the NFL. I have sent a letter to the Roger Goodell's office informing him of this fact. I have informed him that I will be playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers and would be quite happy with the NFL minimum salary. And to think, I haven’t played organized football since high school! Then again, I was pretty darn good in HS, and since is no rigorous analysis proving that it is more difficult to win against good players, I should be just fine competing in the pros. Thanks OP!

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Where's you analysis? I don't think you have any to offer.

You argue by analogy to pro football, but pro poker is rather unlike playing in the NFL. Do you just make football analogies in your brain every time you want to analyze something? I don't think that will get you very far.

In financial markets it is well-known amongst successful players that in many types of trading it is more important to understand the "madness of the crowd" than to understand the economics and business of the underlying companies that serve as vehicles for speculation. And the same is true for tournament poker, and plays a role in analyzing player styles and guesstimating ranges and fold equity.

There is a very simple theorem in the markets: profit is proportionate to the amount of dumb money in the market. The periods of greatest profit for successful professional traders are during the expansion phases of bubbles.

By successful professional trader, I mean someone who knows how to take advantage of others ill-advised risk-taking without exposing himself to excessive risk. This is not easy and is the reason 95% of prospective traders go busto.

The same should be true in poker tournaments: there is a positive correlation between the expected profit of a tourney poker pro and the % of bad players in the tourney.

However, once again, taking advantage of bad players is not easy, due to variance of results caused by a wide range of styles amongst bad players.


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Yikes! Time to punt!