Arnold Snyder's Response to Sklansky's Article is Up

[BigAlK]

If you have the book it's in the section titled "Folding Aces." In this he sets up a scenario where there are 5 people left in the WSOP ME. The chip leader has $2 million in chips, the next 3 all have $1 million, and you're so short stacked that you're almost certain to go out in 5th. Then all 3 of the $1 million stacks go all in, you look down and see AA. Sklansky says that you should fold since in the unlikely event that your aces hold quadrupling your stack still isn't going to help your chances much. By folding you're virtually guaranteeing you'll place 3rd or 4th.

That's the setup. Then he says "about the only person who should consider playing two aces in this spot is me, since the extra book sales a World Championship would give me might swing the decision to a call."

[mornelth]

Yep, that's the one... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[PairTheBoard]

Thanks. I guess when David wrote that he didn't envision the day when pretty much anybody could write and sell a poker book if they get famous enough.

PairTheBoard

[Nate.]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks. I guess when David wrote that he didn't envision the day when pretty much anybody could write and sell a poker book if they get famous enough.

PairTheBoard

[/ QUOTE ]

Sklansky also posted recently that final-table considerations were one reason he called a raise with AK instead of reraising allin with it when they were down to 2 tables at the Borgata.

Anyway, it's mostly trivial: take the money that an Nth-place finish will give, consider it part of the Nth-place prize, and calculate accordingly. Nobody I've read or heard disputes this.

--Nate

[BBB]

After reading the articles discussed in this thread, I had a couple of thoughts:

At the very start of the tournament, obviously Sklansky/Malmuth are correct. On the first hand of a tournament, regardless of the structure, if you are an above average player, you certainly should not accept a roughly even-money wager for all of your chips.

But, in a tournament populated by players with a variety of playing abilities, it seems to me such a tournament is at least to some degree a race, in which each good player is aiming to win the dead money before it winds up in the hands of other good players. To that end, it seems to me that if a good player has plenty of chips relative to the blinds, but is at a table with position on one or more poor players whose stacks are significantly larger than his own, that it might be worth it to take an even-money gamble (or even take slightly the worst of it) in order to build his stack to the point where he could break the poor players - in such a situation I think Snyder's multiplier logic might be correct (it's worth it to take 120-100 now if it means that you will find yourself with a 2-1 edge later in a spot where you could just as well win 440 as 200).

Of course, this latter argument would be more likely to apply if typical stacks were on the order of 20-40 BBs than if they were over 100 BBs, because when the stacks are extremely deep it will likely be rare that you can get even half of an opponent's stack on any one hand.

(Disclaimer: I've read the articles discussed in this thread, but I haven't read TPFAP yet (I've ordered it)).

[David Sklansky]

"but is at a table with position on one or more poor players whose stacks are significantly larger than his own, that it might be worth it to take an even-money gamble (or even take slightly the worst of it) in order to build his stack to the point where he could break the poor players - in such a situation I think Snyder's multiplier logic might be correct (it's worth it to take 120-100 now if it means that you will find yourself with a 2-1 edge later in a spot where you could just as well win 440 as 200)."

Please think before you write stuff like this. You go from talking about willingness to take 120-100 to willingness to take a coin flip or worse. The fact that a sucker, who you can double up on, may soon lose his chips does indeed mean that you should be willing to take closer gambles with others than you would if he could be expected to last longer. But never to the point where you should take the worst of it on your earlier gambles. Remember that if you don't take that earlier gamble, it makes it that much more likely you will get a chance to face the sucker albeit with lesser chips.

[BBB]

My apologies to all who read my earlier post; I did throw that even-money/worst of it comment in hastily and carelessly.

At the time, I was thinking that, for example, it would be worth it to take 100-95 odds against for all my chips if it were guaranteed that, if I won, I would then be offered 2-1 odds for all of my chips (I would quadruple up 32.5% of the time). So my chip-EV of this gamble would be 130%.

But my hypothetical is very flawed. There's no guarantee that you're going to find a 2-1 spot for all those chips (and if you do, but he has you covered, you can probably find more chances later to get the rest of his chips). More likely, you'll find several occasions to make +EV decisions for smaller amounts of chips at a time, which you would be able to make whether or not you had doubled up earlier (not to mention that risking going broke getting 130-100 is not a huge bonanza for an above-average player tournament player with a fairly deep stack anyway).

[silvershade]

Speaking as someone who has no dog in this race I've come to the conclusion that Sklansky and Malmuth are correct so far as it goes in terms of dollar value per chip. That said I've also come to the conclusion that this is largely immaterial as putting dollar values on chips in play doesnt seem a particularly useful way to value those chips, it seems to me that chips are indeed simply a tool which is used to achieve the real goal of finishing as deeply into the money as possible, my view I guess aligns more with Snyder at this point in that I've concluded that the value of the chips lays primarily in their utility. More specifically it seems to me that chips individually have no intrinsic value at all beyond that they are part of larger blocks of chips that can be used to achieve objectives in play. Individual chip value is I think largely a meaningless concept. Even if we finish first we aren't actually paid by chip count but by finishing position, the fact we have all the chips if we win is actually secondary to the more important fact that no one else has any.

It seems to me that chip value is really linked to how many options you have available to achieve tactical and strategic objectives, nothing more. If I can win a pot that gives me enough total chips to cross a threshold to open up new options then the value of the chips in that pot might well be higher for me than the value of the chips I have to risk to try and win that pot, I can conceive that it might even be worthwhile for me to take a little the worst of it at face value in order to get these strategeic benefits on the times I win. From my perspective a large stack generally has more power to achieve my goals than a smaller stack because I can do more with a larger stack. Any value a small or medium stack has, is a combination of it's potential to grow into a larger stack combined with whatever utility i can extract from it in its present form. The larger stack of course has both greater current utility and it's potential to become even bigger is easier to realise directly because of that greater utility.

All this amounts to my personal conclusion that the chips in a bigger stack are in fact usually more valuable because I can do more with them and the chips in a smaller stack less valuable because usually I can do less. In simple terms I guess more utility=more value and less utility=less value. Of course the chips only have more value so long as I continue to use them effectively, the extra utility has no value unless I am using it ( even if that usage is as simple as denying others access to the chips they need ).

I didnt post here to claim my view is necessarily correct but to give an insight into what an individual who has followed the debate in an interested fashion without any real emotional commitment on either side is thinking at this point. By and large I have learned a great deal from 2+2 materials, Sklansky's work in particular, but I have to say I think at this point Snyder has a better handle on these fast tournament dynamics. I know in a few of the tournaments i've played since reading his book I have been able to do what i could never really do before, build and utilise a big stack.

[WRX]

Hi, silvershade. With your interest in questions of chip value, utility, etc., you may want to follow this thread. Maybe it should have been in the poker theory forum, but once these things get started....

Thanks for your interest.