The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Snyder...

[fraac]

Re the lack of example hands, the difference between Harrington and Snyder given a certain M and speed would be statistical and would need modelling from that point until the end of the tournament. Wouldn't it?

[fraac]

If Harrington's theory about zones is right then I don't see how Snyder wouldn't be more right by smoothing the changing hand values.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi fraac:

You wrote:

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the difference between Harrington and Snyder given a certain M and speed would be statistical and would need modelling from that point until the end of the tournament. Wouldn't it?

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Let's see what Snyder says. This is from the Books section of his website:

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We have realized for some time that if you follow the strategies in Harrington's book in fast tournaments (tournaments with blind levels lasting less than an hour) you will be a losing player. We have only more recently realized that Harrington's strategies are weak in slow tournaments as well. Harrington's Vol. II has some value for the discussion of specific hands in specific circumstances. It is also of value for gaining an understanding of a common, and particularly exploitable, "by the book" type of player you will frequently encounter at the tournament tables.

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Well, if this is the case, there shouldn't be any problem with coming up with lots of example hands where the strategy for how to play them would be quite different in tournaments with 60 or more minute rounds compared to tournaments with 15 or 20 minute rounds. In fact, some of these examples should be completely obvious.

Best wishes,
Mason

[fraac]

Still not sure what examples you hope to see. If 'weak in slow tournaments as well' implies a strategic difference not directly due to changing hand values, Snyder probably explains that elsewhere. The button calling / pseudo-smallball thing, probably. You know what that looks like.

If you're saying - and I think you might be - that in any given hand Snyder will crunch all his variables and arrive at a strategy identical to Harrington's, novel idiosyncrasies notwithstanding, then I can see exactly what you mean... but nowhere does Harrington use his wristwatch to randomize which zone he's in. Snyder is attempting to code the optimal tournament bot where every decision is stochastic. Hand examples can't show this.

[WRX]

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However, there are some flaws in Snyder's book, the most notable being that he didn't realize the tourneys are percentage payback as opposed to being winner take all, and in these threads I have given a number of very specific examples as to exactly where I think his advice is wrong. Yet none of you have ever addressed these spots. In addition, no one has ever given any specific examples of hands that should be played differently because of the time factor. That needs to be done before you can say that Snyder has it right on this point.

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Mason, when you say "none of you," I get the feeling I'm in the group you call "you," but please understand that we're not a club or something. Few if any of the people commenting here have a personal ax to grind.

For a response to your challenge asking for specific hand examples, please look here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...age=0&vc=1

[silvershade]

I think part of what is missing here is that there are problems with waiting for good cards that are exacerbated by fast blind levels.

Firstly, the good cards might never actually arrive, this is obviously more likely given shorter blind levels as you will simply have fewer hands before being blinded off.

Secondly, if you wait too long you may not have enough chips left to really extract full value from these cards even if they do arrive. Again this is very obviously more likely to be a problem if the blinds are fast.

Each of these problems is likely to be recurrent, even if you get that first good hand, you only buy a little time before you need the next, in a fast tournament a good hand buys you time to wait on the next but it's less time than it would be in a faster tournament.

It seems reasonable that we should in fact be making adjustments based on these factors that are in fact directly affected by tournament speed. Overall we have less incentive to wait for hands because we will see fewer of them, they are likely worth less to us when they arrive and they do less to solve our problem of staying alive anyway. If the reward for waiting is diminished it seems obvious we should be less inclined to wait.

The obvious adjustment ought to be to broaden our starting hand requirements where the blind levels are fast, beggars cannot be choosers so to speak.

[jeffnc]

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Look at his silly reply to the "NL cash games dying out" post. Mason predicted NL cash games would be dead. His response was not an admission that he was wrong, but he actually said "Well they actualy did." It's childish and silly. Even if they did become less popular for a time, it's clearly not for the reasons he gave - they were ludicrous and wildly wrong, and he can't admit it. Do you really need someone to explain to you why there are still bad players playing NL cash games? Do you really need someone like Mason trying to theorize to you why it can't possibly be happening?

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This is an amazing paragraph. With only one exception that I know of, you could not find a no limit cash game that went on any sort of regular basis in a public cardroom for at least ten years. They only made a come back when no limit tournaments got on TV.

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That's not the point. The point is that the reason you gave for NL drying up IS WRONG. You said it's too easy for the good players to wipe out the bad players, so therefore the bad players would not play any more and only good players would be playing each other and hardly anyone would make any money. That's WRONG. You can spin this however you want. What's so hard about admitting that? It's no big deal to be wrong sometimes, but you act like a school child. That's one of the reasons your credibility is dropping.

There are 2 resasons NL cash are still popular even though so many bad people are playing. (This is my opinion and if I'm wrong in 5 years I'll admit it.)
1) there are so many bad players that bad players often just shift their money around at the limits they play (this is something you failed to recognize in your original essay.)
2) people have exposable income to spend. They have a gambling budget and they intend to spend it and have fun. This is why bad blackjack players, and roulette players, and keno players still flock to the casinos. (You failed to recognize this in your original essay.)

[jeffnc]

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Still not sure what examples you hope to see.

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No hand examples are necessary. (Although when a hand example was quoted from Harrington's book, he ignored it. But that's beside the point.)

Hand examples are not the issue because no matter what your strategy is the decisions in any specific hand example can be debated. All you need to do is take some strategy that's already laid out, such as Harrington's Green/Yellow/Orange/Red strategy. Then all you have to do is understand that this is a dynamic, not static, scale. There is not just "green zone" and that's it. There is "low green zone", or "green zone but after one more hand you'll be yellow zone". There is rate of change. There is the amount of time you expect to spend in each zone. There is the number of hands you expect to get while in each zone. (In fact, if you read Harrington he says the M strategy is supposed to address just that - how many hands you can expect to see for some time period related to the changing blinds.)

That's the problem Snyder addresses. Harrington says you need to play more aggressively and take more risk with weaker hands in the yellow zone than the green zone. It should be intuitively obvious that if you are exactly at the bottom of the green zone with no antes and you are on the button, you will play sightly differently than if you are exactly at the bottom of the green zone UTG. Harrington does address this, and the quote from the book was already posted in this thread (although Mason chooses to pretend it wasn't.)

Harrington addresses the point being made. He just doesn't fully flesh out the math, as Snyder did. PF is not a replacement for M, it's a complement and refinement. And one that by all implications in Harrington's book, he agrees with.

Harrington says if the blinds are coming up quickly, you make an adjustment to your strategy (beyond the "static"" strategy recommended for each zone). In a fast tournament, by definition, the blinds are coming up quickly all the time . M alone is not enough to determine your strategy, even according to Harrington.

[jeffnc]

I agree with the earlier poster who said that the "any 2 cards on the button" thing is being overhyped. The point really is that with your slide through the "zones" accelerated, you have to use more tricks than just playing weaker cards more aggressively, as Harrington recommends. You can't just start playing even worse cards, you have to look for different opportunities, and that's what Snyder's going for. Everyone knows position can be an advantage, Snyder's just saying the faster your slide would be through the zones, the more you have to play these other opportunities. The button is the best position there is and this is not a tournament tactic per se. What he's saying is "use such tactics more now".

A quote from a recent 2+2 trip report:

The Asian guy is good. After he bets the Jewish kid out of a pot, the following dialogue transpires:

Jewish Kid: "What'd you have? Kings? Aces"

Asian Guy: "Don't worry about it."

Jewish Kid: "You didn't have anything."

Asian Guy (picking up dealer button and twiring it around): "I had this. It comes around the table every ten hands. You should use it."

[SplawnDarts]

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That's not the point. The point is that the reason you gave for NL drying up IS WRONG. You said it's too easy for the good players to wipe out the bad players, so therefore the bad players would not play any more and only good players would be playing each other and hardly anyone would make any money. That's WRONG.

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Actually, no, it's precisely what happened. Were you there? Because I was, and you could not get a PL or NL game with even a single non-professional player unless it was tournament side action. if you wanted a game and got one, it meant YOU were the fish.

NL was as dead as strip-deck 5stud and Francisco Franco