The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Snyder...

[bustedromo]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi Fish:

In your example suppose when your M is 22 you are dealt a seven-deuce and are first to act. You should fold. On the other hand, if your M was 3 and you are first to act with that seven-deuce you move all-in. Tournament speed has nothing to do with it.

Best wishes,
Mason

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This is completely retarded. Only by choosing one of the most outlier scenarios possible could you make your point and ... so ... you do so !

M' and M'' matter a lot in many tournament structures.

First off, anyone who has studied seriously in any field knows that if a metric is important, and its derivatives exist in practice, then almost always at least the 1st derivative is also important, and often the 2nd as well. One should take this more universal pattern as the starting point for thought on this matter.

Second, you should always be looking for a way to optimize your play. M' looks to be a potential tool and so you should always be on the lookout for scenarios where it might help you make a tough decision. I am always dynamically re-calc'ing my M, M', M'' on every significant change in my stack-size or in the blind/antes-level. I even wrote a litte C# app to help me do this.

Let's look at a scenario where M' is significant:

Scenario A : blinds 100/200, next blinds 150/300, stack=4500, M=15, M'=-5

Scenario B : blinds 100/200, next blinds 200/400, stack=4500, M=15, M'=-7.5

In Scenario B you must be more aggressive than in Scenario A. Your M is collapsing 50% faster. If you do not play any hands by the next level, you will be at an M of 7.5 or less, at which point you will be forced to begin playing aggressively even with non-premium hands. It is better to somewhat step up the aggression now, especially with premium hands.

In Scenario A, with small PP in MP up against an EP min-raise, raising is probably out of the question and call/fold is a tough decision. A call costs 1/22.5 of your stack. You're 9:1 to hit a set, and stacking an opponent is then possible. The math gets subjective, with dependencies on post-flop play and opponent tendency to be drawn all-in so I won't attempt it. But 1/22.5 of your stack is high enough to significantly affect your fold-equity in future potential allin scenarios that a good enough argument for folding is there.

In Scenario B, once again with a small PP in MP against an EP min-raise you are much less likely to fold, and indeed a 7.5xBB raise or so might look more attractive than calling. You have much more pressure to play premium hands before the next blind level than in Scenario A. It's probably a call/raise decision.

M' matters !

Maybe not "in your face, it's so obvious dude" matters. But if you want to be a winning tourney player today you need to optimize every decision. In today's tourney world, M' matters a lot !

Most of the great inet tourney players know this concept well and significantly use it to their advantage.