The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Snyder...

[Worldclass]

I don't think Harrington is holding anything back. Why would he? He made his money & he is getting older. By his own admission he barely plays anymore anyway. The man has written the bible on beating poker tournaments & he is responsible for making thousands of players better.

[Bjorn]

It seems like some people reason like there is some kind off special intrinsic value of beeing in the green zone. All else beeing equal that may of course be the case but all else is rarely equal.

Compare the following two strategys A & B that at some point some distance into the tournament would have the following positions with their respective probabilities. (Heavily simplified of course)

STRATEGY A

Green zone 40%
Yellow zone 5%
Orange zone 5%
Red zone 5%
Busted 45%

STRATEGY B
Green zone 10%
Yellow zone 25%
Orange zone 30%
Red zone 25%
Busted 10%%

To know which strategy is better you'd have to construct a (weigthed) average of $EV over the various outcomes. To automaticaly claim that strategy A is better just because it has a larger chance of keeping you in the green zone is simply not correct.

/Bjorn

[BigAlK]

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It seems like some people reason like there is some kind off special intrinsic value of beeing in the green zone. All else beeing equal that may of course be the case but all else is rarely equal.

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Bjorn,

There is an intrinsic value of being in the green zone. Read the quotes from Harrington about being a complete player with all moves available to you. To say there is no intrinsic advantage is like saying that a carpenter with all his tools, hammer, saw, and screwdriver doesn’t have an advantage in accomplishing his job than a carpenter with only a hammer. That just doesn’t make sense.

Al

[Piers]

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However, he makes the important point throughout his posts and book that fast play to build up a chip lead is not essential in a slow tournament, while it IS essential in a fast tournament.

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Essential is a bit strong, and just seems the wrong adjective to me.

If you can play fast successfully yes you should, not because it is a fast tournament, but because your EV is higher playing that way. Alternately if you do not have the skills to play a fast strategy then it is clearly not essential for you to play a fast strategy that is beyond you.

Playing a fast strategy is not about the speed tournament it’s about whether you can do it or not.

Personally I think the most important skill for a fast tournament is correct red zone play, as most key decision will be made there. Either because you are in the red zone or your opponent is.

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The point Piers misses is that, when you are short, you are no longer a fully functional poker player.

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I did not miss this. I just think that the point is being overemphasised.

Remember you can only use these skills when both your opponents are in the Green zone. A typical fast tournament might have the highest stack at the table with an M of 15 and most Ms under 7. You cannot use your supposed green zone skills if everyone else is in the Red zone.

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. You may prefer to play in the orange zone or red zone, but if you do it's because your poker skills are limited

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Precisely, most poker players’ skills are limited. A typical person playing a conservative strategy will not be able to use all the green zone skills available (almost by definition), so he gains far less by being in the green zone. And might well play better in the Red or Orange zone.

The important thing is to know your abilities and limitations, and make intelligent use of this understanding.

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Mason and Piers keep reiterating an assertion that tournament speed has no effect on strategy choices. But the minute a conservative style is a viable option with one structure, and not a viable option with a different tournament structure, their assertion is wrong

Specifically, what Arnold is saying is that while you can use either conservative or fast strategy in a slow event, fast tournament structures require that you abandon conservative strategies in order to stay in the green zone.

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I am saying that tournament speed has no effect on your strategy choice, on the assumptions that you always play the bets strategy of which you are capable.

If it is correct for you to play a fast strategy in a fast tournament then you should play one in a slow tournament. If you do not posses the skills to do this than you should stick to a conservative strategy in both types of tournaments. The tournament type has not changed your choice of strategy.

However there is a proviso.

IS ARNOLD SNYDER SUGGESTING YOU MAKE –EV DECSIONS IN ORDER TO STAY IN THE GREEN ZONE?

This seems to be a key point everyone is glossing over. If he is saying this and is correct, then he has a point.

You might play worse with a fast strategy than a conservative one, but the fast one is more likely to keep you in the green zone via increasing variance.

E.g. you have a play where a conservative strategy will move you always to the yellow zone, while a slightly worse EV play (in tournament equity ignoring player skill) will ether have you out the tournament or put you in the green zone. Is it ever correct to make the worse EV play?

I think the answer is yes, but the effect is so small that it can be ignored in practice. It seems to me that Arnaold is saying this effect is not negligible but one of the most important factors to be considered. Am I misunderstanding him here?

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2. They have to show that Arnold's math is wrong in Chapter 10 of The Poker Tournament Formula, where he shows the mathematical basis of the edge a big chip stack has over a small chip stack in a tournament.

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Arh! What is this? Ok I have no clue what this formula is about so can’t comment. Without establishing whether this formula is correct or nonsense I guess it is not possible to come to a conclusion. Is the formula correct?

However it does seem to me that Arnold is saying you should be making locally –EV decisions in order to increase your chance of staying in the green zone.

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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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But this is mathematically unsound reasoning. In the long run, two opponents of equal skill will have equal luck. Relying on luck to get you out of jams when someone has an edge over you is unsound professional gambling. It would be the equivalent of a card counter placing a big bet when he doesn't have the edge, and just hoping he wins this time. It is true that he will often win when he bets at a disadvantage, but he will not win often enough to make him a winner overall.

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My statement stands; what you say is true but irrelevant..

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Piers admits to having a problem with knowing what to do with a big stack--essentially he is admitting he lacks a broad range of skills.

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I was giving an example from seven years ago when I had recently started playing, to illustrate how some people’s play will improve when moving from the green zone to the yellow and orange zone, rather than the other way around.

Saying its essential to play fast to stay in the green zone is silly, what is essential is to understand you own abilities and weaknesses and to play the best you can within those restrictions.

[Shandrax]

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Sure, it might be good regardless of the speed, but if the speed is high, it seems to be essential. Seeing as many flops as possible as cheaply as possible in order to flop a monster is like running the river twice in cash games -> it should reduce variance.

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I think it will actually increase variance, but potentially increase ROI.

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The chance to make a flush if you start with 2 suited cards is about 6%. If you play 100 of these hands during a tournament, you should make 6 flushes. If you only play that hand once....you might hit a jackpot, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Basically the idea is that if you increase the number of samples towards infinity you will eventually get a "normal distribution".

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Mason's essay says that this style will cause you to bust out early more often.

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If you start the tournament with M 65 you will certainly lose some chips playing that style, which reduces your overall chances, but the point of a "big bankroll" is that you won't go broke immediately.

[Bjorn]

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It seems like some people reason like there is some kind off special intrinsic value of beeing in the green zone. All else beeing equal that may of course be the case but all else is rarely equal.

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Bjorn,

There is an intrinsic value of being in the green zone. Read the quotes from Harrington about being a complete player with all moves available to you. To say there is no intrinsic advantage is like saying that a carpenter with all his tools, hammer, saw, and screwdriver doesn’t have an advantage in accomplishing his job than a carpenter with only a hammer. That just doesn’t make sense.

Al

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I think you have missunderstood my point.

Of course a carpenter would be better off with hammer, saw, and screwdriver than just a hammer. My point is that is that you have to weigh the risks of beeing reduced to just a hammer vs the risks of not even having that.

I.e. it's not that there is not value in trying to stay in the green zone but that it has to be weigthed against the risk of busting out early (or beeing reduced to a very small stack).

Plus as someone pointed out, being in the green zone doesn't do you much good toolwise if due to tournament speed everyone else is in the red zone. (Obviously it is still better in $EV because you have more chips.) To continue the carpenter comparison neither a saw nor a screwdriver is much use if the job is all hammering nails.

/Bjorn

[Zim]

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Radar writes:

In order for Mason and Piers to show that Arnold's argument is invalid, they have to show that one of the following items is mathematically wrong:

1. They have to show mathematically that fast play will not more frequently keep you in the green zone in fast tournaments than conservative play.

OR

2. They have to show that Arnold's math is wrong in Chapter 10 of The Poker Tournament Formula, where he shows the mathematical basis of the edge a big chip stack has over a small chip stack in a tournament.

OR

3. They have to show that you are not limited in your skill options when you sink below the green zone.

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That's a pretty clear stand to take.

So far, the answers have been rather muddled and evasive. It's rather disapointing given that this is a forum dedicated to improving your poker.

Anyone care to step up?

Best,
Zim

[BigAlK]

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The chance to make a flush if you start with 2 suited cards is about 6%. If you play 100 of these hands during a tournament, you should make 6 flushes. If you only play that hand once....you might hit a jackpot, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Basically the idea is that if you increase the number of samples towards infinity you will eventually get a "normal distribution".

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I think you might misunderstand variance. Higher sample size doesn't decrease the variance, it only makes whatever is being measured more likely to be reflective of what we can expect in the future (all things being equal). If we graphed results for money won in a tournament for both the loose and conservative styles being discussed I doubt either one will end up with a normal distribution (the classic bell curve). Obviously doing this for any one person will depend on skill, opponents, etc. It would also take a large sample size to be meaningful. If skill didn't enter into it (meaning that results are 100% based on luck) you'd expect that over a large enough sample size the graph would be flat. What I mean is if the field has exactly 100 people each time you'd expect any one person to finish in each possible place, 1-100 the same number of times. Since skill does enter into the equation an average player would be expected to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack and graphing his results would be close to a normal distribution. Variance is a measure of how spread out the results are from the average. The variance of the flat line (all luck) graph would be very high since the results are spread out as much as possible on the graph. If we assume someone with a high skill level then the style comes into play. For a skilled player playing a conservative style early we'd expect the graph to have a large number of ITM finishes, but very few high finishes. This is because without getting lucky his solid play and skill will help him survive longer, but not give him enough chips to consistently dodge the minefields of bad beats, bad cards, etc that could cripple or knock him out after the bubble bursts. His variance might be similiar to that of a normal distribution, the difference in the graph is that the high point will be farther to the right (an average higher finish) with a more rapid drop off to the right of the mean. We'd expect the graph for a person with equal skill who plays the more aggressive style to be flatter than the conservative style. He would have more early exits, however he'd also have more higher finishes. He would have a lower percentage of finishing in the money, but a higher number of wins or top 3 finishes. His variance is higher. However the increased number of high finishes would be expected to result in winning more money because of the top heavy payout structure in the normal tournament.

[BigAlK]

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I think you have missunderstood my point.

Of course a carpenter would be better off with hammer, saw, and screwdriver than just a hammer. My point is that is that you have to weigh the risks of beeing reduced to just a hammer vs the risks of not even having that.

I.e. it's not that there is not value in trying to stay in the green zone but that it has to be weigthed against the risk of busting out early (or beeing reduced to a very small stack).

Plus as someone pointed out, being in the green zone doesn't do you much good toolwise if due to tournament speed everyone else is in the red zone. (Obviously it is still better in $EV because you have more chips.) To continue the carpenter comparison neither a saw nor a screwdriver is much use if the job is all hammering nails.

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Fair enough. I think it depends on your goal for a tournament. If it is to squeak into the money then getting to the point where you're in the money with a red zone stack is good enough and if you get lucky you can go high. If your goal is to win then a more aggressive approach might be better. You'll either bust out of the money or have a higher chance of reaching the end game with a bigger stack. If you're in the green zone and everyone else is in the red zone then you'll need to be selective as to when to call when your opponents push, but be better equipped to survive those times you lose. Every confrontation won't be one that determines your survival like it will for everyone else. Granted, your full tool set won't be of use at that point, but you'll still be in much better shape to go deep in the money.

[Piers]

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2. They have to show that Arnold's math is wrong in Chapter 10 of The Poker Tournament Formula, where he shows the mathematical basis of the edge a big chip stack has over a small chip stack in a tournament.

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No one has explained what this wonderful formula is about. I have not read it but this is the point I have the most doubt on. I noticed Mason has not commented on it? Can someone with more than three posts comment on this formula?