LC: What is the history of STTf on 2p2?

[Aleo]

As already mentioned, the STTF began, in a sense, within the Tournament Poker forum. As SNGs began to increase in popularity, the forums were divided.

Back in those days, there were posts by many of the Tournament Forum regulars, including Fossilman (Greg Raymer). I remember laughing at the time because soon after the split there was a crisis for some about how to treat 2-table SNGs. Which forum did posts like that belong in!? OMG Disaster! That soon went away, as it was obvious that the new forum was meant for SNGs and multi table SNGs never got the following that single table ones did anyways.

Anyways, Immediately after the split, most SNG players were playing on PartyPoker's 800-1000 chip SNGs, which at the time were only 5+1, 10+1, 30+3, 50+5 and 100+8. Yes, that's 100+8, with no 20+2. This made 10+1s extremely popular as the jump from 10+1 to 30+3 kept many at that limit who might otherwise have moved on.

The games then were ridiculously weak. To compare them to todays games at all is silly. It wouldn't surprise me if good 10+1 players today could be profitable at 100+8 back then. More importantly, ROI expectations were much larger. Debates constantly raged about ROI and ITM expectations over 50%. I began playing SNGs seriously with these kinds of stats, as did many others.

Back then, few multitabled. Those who did were gods for playing 2 or 4 tables. Nobody played 8+. Many who did multitable did it with overlapping tables on one monitor. Fun times.

Anyways, the frequent, or important posters initially were William, Bozeman, Stagemusic, and a few others. It's important to remember how slowly and deliberately the forum moved back then. Nobody was racking up pooh-bah post counts very quickly in here. All of 2+2 had only a few thousand members (most inactive) compared to fifty times that today.

A proto-community quickly developed with real authority in the forum falling on a few already established tournament players who popped in from time to time. I particularly remember William playing a big role back in those days. My initial biggest SNG influences were undoubtedly

Bozeman
William
Fossilman (though based on his posts in the Tourney forum)

Stagemusic is another forgotten influence on the STTF because he is the initial guide-writer. He had a short strategy summary way back then that would later influence my own. I'm not sure how good he was, as he quickly dissapeared, but his guide at least was infuential to me. I always found it odd that my silly guide became so wildly popular while Stage's was all but forgotten.

Bozeman is THE FORGOTTEN HERO of the STTF. In those days, I read every Bozeman post religiously and I learned a lot. He was the only guy hinting at weird bubble considerations and changing chip values. He also talked a lot about stats and posted a lot of math. I honestly feel he was holding back a lot and really understood ICM two years before anyone else. He coined the term ICM.

William in those days, as today, made few strategy posts but kept the forum going and made a well timed injection of wisdom now and then. I butted heads with him occasionally, with one unfortunate incident basically ending his frequent posting here. Not my fault though as he was getting bored with us anyways. For what is is worth, he was right, SNGs are the kindergarten of Poker.

There were great players back then, but I was too dumb to realize who they were. Well kind of, anyways. Not sure when each falls in the timeline, but some good players were:

Bozeman
Daliman
Strassa
ZeeJustin
Frozen

Of course there were other great SNGers, but these are the ones who posted, albeit rarely. Gigabet was actively crushing poker back then, but never posted. Truth be told, I wouldn't really know who was good but someone like Daliman or Gigabet could probably comment on this accurately.

The initial community aspect of STTF sprung up around the still-surviving trout weekly tournaments. Of course back them we'd all meet at the first standard 2-table Pokerstars SNG as soon as the lobby hit the right time. I want to post a big list of names here but each time I try, I know I am leaving important names off so I'm not even going to try except to name a few who I thought were especially important:

DrPhysic. Started the forum weekly tourneys and was the key to much of the community atmosphere of the forum at the time. Actually, I should mention Stoneii here as well.

PrayingMantis. Maybe it's just that we communicated in a lot of the same threads, but hugely important to my own poker develoment anyways. I had lots of valuable discussions with PM and I think he was a major force in guiding the discussion back then.

This is of course, all relative. Many others will see things differently, and will name other posters as being important. As far as strategy contribution is concerned there are definitely other names as important. I am undoubtedly forgetting very important people who I will later realize and think "how could I have possibly forgotten".

I am also of course not mentioning one poster who I guess will remain anonymous. This poster PM'ed me asking for advice about beating SNGs. I had gotten PMs like that before so I'm not sure what was different, but I posted a very long response that I later copied into the forum because I thought it might have value. This was the first incarnation of the "how to beat Party 10+1" guide. This poster and I communicated through PMs and MSN messaging for some time after, and to my knowledge, he isn't even playing poker anymore.

The guide, of course was later condensed and reformatted by Benfranklin, with some revision by myself. This second version is the one that acheived even more popularity and became so wildly influential. crazy. I have often stated and still maintain that I always prefered the first, though it's irrelevant now as they both are pretty weak and worthless to todays games.

After that guide, I authored or contributed to maybe 5-6 threads that I considered exceptionally important to myself, and to what I saw as extremely important to the strategy development of the time.

Those days were so much fun. We were really learning something back then. Even better, it felt like we in the process of discovery. It seemed like nobody had yet said or discussed many of the things we were discussing, and so many of the questions of the time really were open-ended.

Remarkably, many involved, including myself, were not hugely profitable high stakes multi-tabling poker machines. I spent FAR more time doing math and just thinking about poker as I did actually playing back then. Of course I was successful when I did play, but I stayed at low stakes for a long time, and throughout the phase where I really contributed to this forum.

This all came before ICM took over the discussion and Dethgrind and Eastbay changed everything. I really enjoyed those early ICM discussions a lot too.

Then the forum changed and for me it really crystallized with the arrival of one person

Raptor

Raptor was where this game was headed and I could tell the moment I saw it. Young guys who could quickly absorb everything we had discovered and do it well on 546302032562 tables at once as though it was obvious all along. Not only that, but they upped the ante on the level of communication. Instead of slow paced threads that sometimes went on for weeks, now everyone was instant messaging and carrying the discussion forward at a much faster pace.

The prolific posters were all playing high stakes, and many regualar posters were now playing professionally with huge profits.

Another significant factor for change was Irieguy and the meetings that took place. To this day I have never actually met a single person from 2+2 and that used to be fairly standard. Now it seems there is a large and growing mass of you who know one another and regularly meet.

Of course this is all good. I strongly considered becoming a part of it all at the time. But life happens and many things changed for me and in the end I dissapeared also and allowed new names to come forward. I am an academic now and poker is once again, just a hobby.

The forum is stronger than ever and one of the most popular on 2+2 but it just isn't the same for me. For my part, I am grateful to have been there at the beginning, but those days are gone.

Sigh. I shouldn't leave this without trying again to name more of the posters of the past so here goes. Please forgive me for inevitably leaving important names off

...

Tried again, but nope. Can't do it
I suggest reading many of the old posts in Shadow's post and considering the posters there an acceptable list.

Regards
Brad

[suzzer99]

Absolutely fascinating read. Thanks a ton Brad.

[Aleo]

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If I have time this weekend maybe I'll post my version of the history of the STTF.


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I am anxiously awaiting this. And Yugo, or anyone else's version too.

Regards
Brad

[billxo1b]

Aleo:

I remember I printed out your guide, and read it whenever I went to bathroom[img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

thank you!

[Dr_Jeckyl_00]

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Today we have tools like Eastbay's to do the math, but I feel that I gained a better understanding of things by doing it myself for a while.


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I agree 100%. not that I was ever a great sng player, but I did ok and I'd say the one thing that seperated me and a lot of other posters and how we played and understood the games was understanding, in detail, the math behind the play. Learning to do longhanded ICM math was the first and perhaps the most significant thing I've learned in poker that generated cash.

God, it seems like a lifetime ago when we were playing 800 and 1000 chippers on Party ripping off 15%+ roi's month after month.

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Can anyone post an ICM calculation by hand... I think this would help a lot!

[fluorescenthippo]

whatever happened to bozeman and people like him? if they understood icm/bubble stuff so much better than most back then where did they go? they cant be busto

[The Yugoslavian]

Meh, I used to be the master searcher but I can't get anything to work well enough anymore...google sucks, 2p2 archive search is awful. I literally cannot find posts I KNOW existed. Plus I'm lazy.....but yeah a history thing would be sorta cool.

Yugoslav

[Aleo]

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whatever happened to bozeman and people like him? if they understood icm/bubble stuff so much better than most back then where did they go? they cant be busto

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Good question. Then again, 2+2 might have very little to offer him. Plenty of players never post here and simply don't have the time. This is a situation I understand well.

[citanul]

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Can anyone post an ICM calculation by hand... I think this would help a lot!

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I don't want to derail this thread too much, so if you have any further questions, PM me. What you need to know is that the ICM values themselves are just a formula (which I'm guessing is googlable) which assigns monetary values to stacks given other stacks and the prize structure. I don't know if people ever did the actual ICM valuation mathematics by hand, if they did, I pity them greatly, and it was before my time. A look at the rest of the math would look like this, as cribbed from Sklansky's $200 sit n go question #3, and ChrisV's answer:

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OK hopefully this will end the thread. Let's assume for simplicity that whatever you do, the guy with the 2000 stack will beat the other players (this is the intermediate case for you, obviously it's better for you if the 9000 stack wins and worse if the 1500 stack wins). If you fold, the chip stacks after the hand will be:

7000
5800
700

If you call and win, they'll be:

7000
2500
4000

The ICM equity of your stack in the first hand is 22.5% and in the second 32.75%. (If you don't know what the ICM is, look it up. Basically it's a model that calculates what your stack is worth as a percentage of the prize pool. It wraps your chances of coming first, second and third up neatly into one number).

How often do we need to win to break even vs folding? Let P(win) be the percentage of the time we win. Then:

P(win) * 32.75 = 22.5 (to break even)

P(win) = 22.5/32.75

P(win) = 0.687

We need to win 68.7% of the time to break even versus folding. Since aces only beat 3 random hands 63.9% of the time, this is a fold with aces. I simplified the problem a little, but I doubt a full analysis would give any different a result. Kings are a huge fold, aces are almost certainly a fold too, but closer.

EDIT: I forgot to include antes in this analysis. But they're too small to make any difference.

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So, the structure goes like this:

We all have stacks, what is the value of yours in the case where you fold? (this is obviously simplistic, and has problems, like it doesn't really take in to account things like how often your opponents will bust each other and gain you equity in doing so.)

Now, if we choose to move all in 3 things can happen (assume we're covered):

1) we win blinds, with probability we assign P
2) we busto, now 0 equity, with probability we assign (1-P)Q
3) we win when called, with probability we assign (1-P)(1-Q)

So then we look at:

ICMVal(Fold)

andICMVal(Push) = P*ICMVal(Stack+Blinds)+(1-P)[Q*ICMVal(0)+(1-Q)ICMVal("doubled up stack)]
= P*ICMVal(Stack+Blinds)+(1-P)(1-Q)ICMVal("doubled up stack")
since one of those terms was 0.

Now if ICMVal(Fold) is > ICMVal(Push), we fold, and if ICMVal(Push) > ICMVal(Fold), we push.

c

ps: I'll get on working on my personal history of this place at some point, but I wanted to answer this question, and point out that at some point, Yugo's bookmarks were the greatest resource in the world. He was a better guard of those than he was his links to hot naked women, of which he was more fond.

[The Yugoslavian]

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Stagemusic is another forgotten influence on the STTF because he is the initial guide-writer. He had a short strategy summary way back then that would later influence my own. I'm not sure how good he was, as he quickly dissapeared, but his guide at least was infuential to me. I always found it odd that my silly guide became so wildly popular while Stage's was all but forgotten.


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Your guide was more like an algorithm and specific. His was way too "fold early / push late / get 70% roi." It was clear to me (I started lurking after he had already disappeared) that he ran super uber hot and possible just ejected when he ran at like 30% roi for a week, [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].

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Bozeman is THE FORGOTTEN HERO of the STTF. In those days, I read every Bozeman post religiously and I learned a lot. He was the only guy hinting at weird bubble considerations and changing chip values. He also talked a lot about stats and posted a lot of math. I honestly feel he was holding back a lot and really understood ICM two years before anyone else. He coined the term ICM.


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Yeah, he was eastbay's inspiration and almost mentor (I have no idea how directly this happened). A lot of what Bozeman stated ended up being gospel too like the 50% roi mark and such.

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William .... For what is is worth, he was right, SNGs are the kindergarten of Poker.


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Epic, epic thread. I've probably read it 20 times from beginning to end, lol.

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Dethgrind


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Dude still posts I realized the other day! It's so weird to think about these guys who didn't make "bigjoe/z32" money but came SO FAR before them and learned the profitable theory so early.

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Then the forum changed and for me it really crystallized with the arrival of one person

Raptor


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I'm still pissed that I got him his stupid trademark avatar and convinced him to get the 4 monitor setup. [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] I told him not to then go and make the idea public!

grrrrrrrrrrrr!

Oh and I'd like to at least throw out a few more names real quick off the top of my head:

Pitcher
Lorinda/Lori
ChrisBrown (who turned out to be a huge moron)
desdia (lololol)
prickly pete I think it was
strassa
squeezstrip (something like that anyway)

Tons more I'm sure...

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Regards
Brad

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I've always loved reading your posts, [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. So much quality rather than quantity. I always loved your old name and avatar as well!

Yugoslav