Is this a really stupid article about the bad players at the WSOP?

[metsm1234]

http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog...archName=poker

The line about how the pros cant win because people play any hands just does not make sense to me. We want those players in the hands against us, right?

[Baloosh]

In theory, yes.

In practice, everyone who's been busted so far wish they'd have been able to get away from that short-term (one hand) bad luck.

[Todd]

Two thoughts,

One, the effect of schooling. If enough Donks are in the hand, you will still have the best of it, but may not be a favorite to win vs. multiple people. This is OK in a cash game, could be crippling in a tourney.

Second, as others have pointed out, some sarcastically, if you continually go all in, even as a 70:20 or 80:20 favorite, the odds are that sooner or later you will Busto.

This is one thing that made the Forrest QQ vs. AA hand interesting to me. Neither player pushed in what at some point or other would have been a natural pushing scenario. I think 'fear' of busting, must keep some of the pros focused on building the stack without increasing your risk of ruin.

I think Sklansky has also writen to some degree that amateurs should eschew any other play, and just shove, to minimize the skill that the pros have. At some point, the pros will have to play back, and the law of averages, as well as the fact that there are 100:1 ratio of amateurs to pros comes into play.

Todd

[sholler]

The article looks like it's written by somebody who knows the rules of poker and how to follow a hand, not any of the thinking behind the play. "Oh my God, a player called a raise with 65o, and got paid off when he turned a full house?" Wait until he covers the hands that brought Negreanu's stack sky high.

[HeroInBlack]

Crappy play is the new good play, because it is obviously superior to alleged good play previously employed by pros.

[WSOPChump]

i mean the pros would love to play tournaments against these 8K players every week. The problem is though that its the most prestigous event in poker. So, if their goal is winning it, it just is not going to happen. Maybe one of the 50 best players in the world will win in the next 30 years but even that is very unlikely.

I think Lederrer said is goal always was to win the main event. But with the field size as it is today he said just making the final table once is a realistic goal.

But yeah overall its great for the skilled player to play a month of tourneys against donk fields. However, it really has hurt any realistic chance of a big star winning it all.

[Ignignokt]

While it's not true that the pros "can't" win, the extremely bad level of play potentially makes the majority of hands a coin-flip.

Many pots in an advanced-level tourney are won by a player with good hand reading skills who basically makes a move that screams, "I have you beat," to which an opponent with half a brain in his head lays down his hand.

These aren't coin-flip preflop all-ins we're talking about, they're four-outers, top pair with no kicker, ace-high backdoor flush draws...stuff that you rationally can't continue with in the face of a big raise. But the donkeys keep calling. One or two of these magic 3-and-4-outers in a big pot will cripple the better player. And with a donkey-to-pro ratio of about 75-to-1, that's a LOT of 4-outers to dodge.

Negreanu has mentioned it, Greg Raymer has mentioned it (of course, being ever the gentleman, he refers to it as "loss of fold equity").

It's Party Poker freeroll play, basically because for many of these players it IS a Party freeroll. If they bust out, they got a trip to Vegas out of it, which for many of them is more than they've ever won at poker. And if they suck out, woo-hoo, they might be on their way to winning the poker equivalent of the lottery!

The article was meh, (the comment about "drawing hands" using a full house as an example was poor) but the point is valid.

[Aleo]

[ QUOTE ]
i mean the pros would love to play tournaments against these 8K players every week. The problem is though that its the most prestigous event in poker. So, if their goal is winning it, it just is not going to happen. Maybe one of the 50 best players in the world will win in the next 30 years but even that is very unlikely.

I think Lederrer said is goal always was to win the main event. But with the field size as it is today he said just making the final table once is a realistic goal.

But yeah overall its great for the skilled player to play a month of tourneys against donk fields. However, it really has hurt any realistic chance of a big star winning it all.

[/ QUOTE ]

I completely agree. Too many players make the flawed logical leap from 'the tourney is impossible to win' to 'the tourney is unprofitable'. This is totally wrong because an unrelated conclusion is being made.

Just because it is very unlikely that a pro will win doesn't mean that it isn't an extremely profitable tourney to play.

I mean, when thought about in terms of making the money, making the top 1% of the field, making a huge payday, etc..., the pros probably have a better chance in the WSOP than in any other tourney. I mean seriously, the top 30 players this year all get a huge prize and we will almost certainly see at least one name player up there.

I think it has to be looked at in terms of percentiles. Making the final table is very much like winning a tourney with 870 players (like the year chris moneymaker won). Making the final 20 is very much like winning a tourney with 435 players, etc... and the payout is similar as well.

In this sense, I think players have changed their impressions about what constitutes an impressive finish in poker's most prestigious event. For one of the name players to simply make the final table or even the top 20 will be seen as a huge accomplishment. And it should be. Not to mention the $1M+ prize.

The rest will just have to be content with an average (professional player) winrate higher than any other tourney in the world.

Regards
Brad S

PS - As a side note, this is also why all the palyers who complain about the WSOP's payout structure are morons. Each percentile should be approximately spread out as in a normal sized tourney. To just start with 20-25% for first and move down would be a huge mistake for all the reasons illustrated in this post. It works when first constitutes 0.12% to 1% of the field, but in this case, that percentile corresponds to an entire final table or much more.

[metsm1234]

Off topic but with these donks playing in the main event, are the cash games that much better when they bust?

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
Crappy play is the new good play, because it is obviously superior to alleged good play previously employed by pros.

[/ QUOTE ]

In the hands of a sufficiently advanced player, a great play is indistinguishable from a crappy play...