The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Snyder...

[Arnold_Snyder]

Shaman, here’s the point: It comes down to the fundamentals of professional gambling.

You make money in gambling by getting action on your bets when you have the edge. The more action you can get when you have the edge, the higher your win rate will be. The bigger the edge you have on your action, the higher your win rate will be.

When any player gets a chip lead on you, he has a mathematical advantage over you. You can beat his mathematical advantage only if you can play with sufficient skill to equal or surpass his chip stack advantage.

On p. 129 of HOH II, Harrington says: “In the Green Zone you’re a fully-functional poker player, and it's worth taking some risks to stay there." (The italics are Harrington’s.) He goes on to touch on the skill options you lose as your chip stack gets smaller and smaller in relation to the cost of a round. My contention is that—even if you are solidly in the green zone—the faster you are approaching the yellow zone, the more risk you should be taking to maintain your fully-functional status.

Whenever an opponent gets a chip lead over you in a tournament, he has a mathematical advantage over you. If your opponent plays with equal skill to you, his chip lead is, essentially, insurmountable, unless you are lucky enough to be dealt superior cards. So I’m not saying you will never win in this situation—there is a lot of flux in gambling, and even when you’re a dog, and facing an opponent of equal skill, you will sometimes get lucky and beat him.

But you won’t beat him overall in this situation, and that’s very important. The only way to beat an opponent who has gained a significant chip lead on you is to neutralize or overcome his chip lead advantage with your superior skill. Unfortunately, if you have allowed your stack to get short in relation to the costs of a round (which is to say, if you have sunk into what Harrington calls the yellow, orange or red zones) you no longer have access to a full set of poker skills. To borrow Harrington’s term, you are no longer a fully-functional poker player.

In addition, once you get short you are no longer able to maximize the action you get when you have the edge. So here you are, forced to play with less skill and less action, precisely when you need to maximize both.

In order to stay in the Green Zone in the Orleans Friday night tournament, you have to make $3275 in chips (more than double your starting stack) during the first 50 hands, meaning you have to have a total stack of over $4500. It’s true that every once in a while in this number of hands you’ll happen to get pocket aces early on when two other players at the table happen to have pocket kings and queens, and you’ll triple up. But way more often you’ll see only a few premium hands, which you aren’t guaranteed to get action on. (And note how different this situation is from a long slow tournament with hour-long blind levels. The $5K NLH event at the WSOP, for instance, has approximately the same starting M as the Orleans Friday night tournament, but some pro players (Phil Helmuth allegedly among them) consider the first blind level (approx. 30 hands) so irrelevant, that they don’t even sit down to play until the second blind level has been reached.)

The slower the tournament structure, the more a conservative poker strategy, such as Harrington’s “green zone” strategy, becomes a viable option. But you should always keep in mind, even in slow tournaments, that anyone who builds a significant early chip lead has a big advantage over anyone with a lesser stack who is playing with equal skill. And again, fast tournaments require a much faster “green zone” strategy just to keep you in the game at all.

I want to thank BigA/K for taking the time to explain so much of my logic here. I realize that most of you guys, being smart advantage players, actually read books by standing around Barnes and Nobles for hours on end, so it may be a few weeks till you all get to the really good stuff. I mean, you’re still discussing the elementary premises of the book. And much as I appreciate BigA/K’s efforts here, I do hope I never bump into him at any table where I’m playing, at least not on my left. I won’t be able to get away with [censored] with him there.

Thanks to all for the stimulating discussion.

[Piers]

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This guy Snyder invented the Zen Count, the best blackjack cardcounting methods ever invented. Maybe he has a point that we are missing.

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To have good original ideas, it is necessary to also have bad ones. I certainly have had enough daft ideas in the past.

Guess I am going to have to read his book.

[trojanrabbit]

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In your frozen button game this would be true. Of course in that situation you could fold until you got the nuts.

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You could but that wouldn't be the optimal play.

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The reason for the different play in the red zone than the other zones is clearly due to the number of orbits we can last.

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I disagree. In the frozen button game, if you were in the red zone and it's folded to you on the button, wouldn't you still push very frequently (~40%) to pick up the blinds? You'd do it because it's a +EV move, not because of the fear of blinding out.

Tysen

[Piers]

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When any player gets a chip lead on you, he has a mathematical advantage over you. You can beat his mathematical advantage only if you can play with sufficient skill to equal or surpass his chip stack advantage.

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What [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

If someone has more chips than you they, have a bigger equity in the tournament than you. You can overtake him if you get sufficiently lucky, or he gets sufficiently unlucky, skill can be used to bias the luck factor slightly.

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My contention is that—even if you are solidly in the green zone—the faster you are approaching the yellow zone, the more risk you should be taking to maintain your fully-functional status.

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I believe that you are overstating the effect. From one of my earlier posts:

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However there is one point in favour of this argument. Some people find they are better at playing with certain stack sizes. For them there might be an argument for biasing marginal decisions in favour of results that increase the chance of playing with the preferred stack size.

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I think that is the extent of it. Its possible I am underestimating the effect, but I feel sure you are overestimating it.

Although some people might prefer to playing in the Yellow or Red zone than the Green zone:

I remember my first big stack tournament, about a year after I learnt poker I entered a big tournament, and found myself with around 10,000 chips with 25-25 blinds. Before this I hand only played a few short-stacked tournaments and online limit. I realised I did not have a clue how to handle such a big stack. I employed the tactic of folding until my stack got short enough that I thought knew what I was doing. Finished about on the bubble, what I deserved I guess.


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But you won’t beat him overall in this situation, and that’s very important. The only way to beat an opponent who has gained a significant chip lead on you is to neutralize or overcome his chip lead advantage with your superior skill.

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I really think that you’re approaching the situation from the wrong angle. You’re not playing a heads up match. It seems to me more sense to focus on what is important, your tournament equity, and the EV of your decisions.

I also believe you are downgrading luck far too much. Luck is far more important in determining success in a specific tournament than skill. The usual way to overcome a large chip disadvantage is to get very lucky.

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The slower the tournament structure, the more a conservative poker strategy, such as Harrington’s “green zone” strategy, becomes a viable option. But you should always keep in mind, even in slow tournaments, that anyone who builds a significant early chip lead has a big advantage over anyone with a lesser stack who is playing with equal skill. And again, fast tournaments require a much faster “green zone” strategy just to keep you in the game at all.

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It’s got nothing to do with tournament structure, just the blinds and the stacks currently at the table.

You play whatever strategy you think will maximise you expected return from the tournament. Inexperienced players would be well advised to follow Harrington’s advice, because the more conservative you play the easier the decisions are. A more experienced player might find they can successfully utilise a more aggressive strategy.

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And again, fast tournaments require a much faster “green zone” strategy just to keep you in the game at all.

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I believe this is the critical error that your confused thinking has lead you to. Although I doubt it’s that costly. You play the table as it is, the tournament structure should have negligible effect on your decision.

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In order to stay in the Green Zone in the Orleans Friday night tournament, you have to make $3275 in chips (more than double your starting stack) during the first 50 hands, meaning you have to have a total stack of over $4500

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Thinking like this is dangerous, it can have you making –EV moves just to get chips to meet some imaginary target you have set yourself.

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Orleans Friday night tournament, but some pro players (Phil Helmuth allegedly among them) consider the first blind level (approx. 30 hands) so irrelevant, that they don’t even sit down to play until the second blind level has been reached.)

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Say you entered a $10,000 buy in competent with 10,000 chips. It might make sense not to leave your $100/$200 NL cash game until the tournament blinds reach 100/200.

[BigAlK]

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Hi Al:

No. It's important when playing a tournament to try to keep your M at a comfortable level (above 20 according to Harrington), and when your M is above 20 you're a "fully functional poker player" meaning that you can and should take risks to maintain your comfortable M.

Best wishes,
Mason

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Mason,

Responding to several posts here. I have read HOHI and II twice as well as III once and continue working on improving my game based largely on their contents. You're correct in that they include several examples from presumably faster tournaments. I'll revisit the essay you reference. However it seems to me you're not questioning the overall premise of the book (playing faster when the structure is faster in order to stay in the green zone as a fully functional player) but are calling into question specific techniques for trying to do so (calling on the button too much with marginal or junk hands). I'm not sure if you're still mid-book, but at some point when discussing integrating all the techniques Snyder discusses some of the things to consider when deciding whether to make a particular move. For the move of calling from the button and taking away the pot one factor might be whether the player(s) in the hand with you are weak-tight and likely to give up on the hand. Another might be your table image - if you've only shown down winning hands a TAG might give up on the hand if the flop missed him and might have hit you - obviously the texture of the flop and his perception of what you might have played factor into that. Although this move is part of the "basic strategy" it isn't something you'd do every time you're on the button in an unraised or standard-raised pot.

BTW, good luck in your first ME.

Al

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Everyone:

This is from page 166. It refers to a fast tournament where at the beginning everyone has started with a lot of chips. Arnold writes:

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In this type of topuenament, don't make the mistake of thinking that you are in the "survival" portion of a slow tournament where you can be very selective about the hands you play. There is no survival period in a fast tournament, even when you start out with a wealth of chips. You don't have 60 minute blind levels. You have 60 minutes to make some money or you will be short stacked. This is the time to be aggressive against all those survivalists. Play loose, get into more pots, and take position shots as appropriate. Be brave. If you lose chips on aggression plays, no problem. Now you can get even more aggressive on your shorter stack.

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Again, even though I agree with the strategy advice, tournament speed has nothing to do with it. This is exactly the way experts would play in a non-tournament side game when the stacks are deep. That's because of the overwhelming implied odds, and the fact that they often want to resize the bets on the later streets in case they get a very good flop. (For more on this see No Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller.)

By the way, in the big slow tournaments, as is pointed out in the Harrington on Hold 'em books, many of the best players are playing exactly as Arnold describes here. They refer to it as "smallball."

Best wishes,
Mason

[Shaman]

Bishop:

I just got your book from Borders. I'm reading it right after the current book (non-poker) that I'm reading right now. You really ought to write a heads-up SNG no limit book. At least an article (if heads up won't fill a whole book), hopefully for the 2+2 magazine. Good luck. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[jackaaron]

What Mason seems to be saying (with good reason) is that you need not worry of tournament speed when considering M because there are defendable plays at each zone when you get there. That's fine, and it's true, each zone does have it's correct strategy.

However...could taking this approach often lead you to the small stack? (yet possibly make it ITM, non-final table more often?) You will often not worry about the ever increasing blinds because you start out in the green
and within so many hands you are in trouble. This isn't the case in certain structures, but come on! there is no denying that online tournaments have blinds speeds so fast that if you don't get a hand in the first 30 hands of a large tournament, your chances of getting to the final table GREATLY diminish.

To me, Snyder's approach actually is similar to many of the approaches that the top ranked, young, online players take today. They would express it differently, but they have absolutely no problem playing for first place from the beginning of the tournament on. Once they get to a much slower blind structure, however, many of their plays will actually become incorrect.

Also, they play MANY tournaments...much more than they could play live.

[Shaman]

Taking an early gamble with the intent of gaining an early lead will allow you to bully the other players. This is a great advantage once just a few minutes later the blinds are relatively very high compared to where it currently is. Taking this risk early on is worth it provided you do actually bully once you've got the chip advantage.

I read somewhere that Scott Fischman was willing to play superlooseaggressive with 1/3 of his chips early in the tournament. If he wins in his gambles he would continue to pound the table even harder. Picture Genghis Khan capturing his enemies civilians early in his campaign, then dressing them up in Monglol costumes, and using them as human shields to capture even more of the enemies people. But if he (Fischman) loses that 1/3 then he would tighten up. But he plays in "slow" tourneys. If he were in a "fast" tourney and he loses 1/3 then he can use that as an excuse to play even faster once the blinds are up, but this time using a move in style of play that would exert a lot of pressure on the medium stacks.

McEvoy was misguided years ago when he claimed that tournament speed should influence strategy. The reason I say this is because when I reviewed his original(co-written with Roy West) tourney book earlier today he said that you should play tight early. He didn't emphasize the "patience factor" in his advice on how to play different M Zone levels. He looked at each M level in isolation recommending strategies for each level independently of how one's play at the current level can be made to have an effect on near future levels.

Snyder has totally different reasons for emphasizing tournament speed. He looks at the CAUSE AND EFFECT RELATIONSHIP between play at this level and how it would affect the advantages one will have on future levels. And I think Mason has totally missed this even though he was right in criticizing McEvoy years ago.

Malmuth and McEvoy shared the opinion that you should play according to the level and change your strategy as you moved levels. But McEvoy thought that speed had to do with it. He was wrong.

Intuitively, I think Snyder is right.

[Shaman]

Mason:

I bought my copy of the Bishop's book at the Borders at Decatur/Sahara. I picked up the very last copy of the book that they had in stock. But before I paid for it, I left it behind a book called The Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I did this so that I would not have to carry anything around with me while I was looking for another book which wasn't poker related (my palms sweat too much that's why I did it). Anyway, while I was doing so in comes of all people Dan Harrington! Small world, huh. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Perhaps, he was looking for Snyder's book but couldn't find it because I already had it locked up? Just thought I'd share this coincidence with you.