Dene Tribe's Poker Tournament Evaluation System is a Rip-Off

[Arnold_Snyder]

I like where Dene Tribe says "you may have already seen complicated systems" for evaluating poker tournament structures, as if there are lots of these types of tournament speed evaluation systems out there. As if there's no sense in crediting any individual author of such a system.

For the record, I developed the first such system and published it in my book, The Poker Tournament Formula, and to my knowledge no other book has yet been published with any similar evaluation system.

I've also published numerous articles on the importance of tournament structure on optimal strategy and skill requirements. The latest of these was "True M" versus Harrington's M: Critical Flaws in Harrington's M Theory, And Why Tournament Structure Matters.

Tribe's system is nothing more than a watered-down version of my "patience factor" method and the "skill level" system in my book. There is absolutely nothing original in his method.

If Mason Malmuth is the editor of the 2+2 mag, I consider his failure to cite my work a blatant rip-off.

I suppose we can expect a new 2+2 tournament book any time now with their "discoveries" about how tournament speed defines skill level and affects strategy, of course without crediting my work.

[Troll_Inc]

Actually I did poker tournament structure evaluation back in 2004, so you were second.

[Mason Malmuth]

First off, I'm not the editor of our Internet Magazine.

However, our editor does send me the articles to read before they are posted, but this month due to a huge amount of manuscript work I did not read all the Internet Magazine articles that went up and the ones I did read (about half of them) were read very quickly.

With that being said, I did read Poker Tournament Evaluation System by Dene Tribe very quickly and saw nothing wrong with it. It's common knowledge, and has been common knowledge for many years, that tournaments which raise the stakes very quickly are not skill oriented. Poker players refer to these as "Crap Shoots," and this was not a revelation from you.

I have asked a friend of mine to look at the article independently of me (and our editor). If he feels that you and/or your book should be cited, we will add that into the article.

I also need to point out that the article of yours that you cite in your post contains numerous inaccuracies as to exactly what Harrington says. As for not crediting your work, or the work of others in our books, this is something that we are very concious of and that we do in our books. In fact, when working on manuscripts for publication, we frequently will have our authors add-in references to the works of other authors whether they are Two Plus Two or not.

Finally, I do want to point out that even though I gave your book a positive review, an 8 on my 1-to-10 scale (with anything being 8 or higher being something I recommend) your book does contain flaws which have already been discussed in length on some of our other forums.

MM

[Sherman]

When I first read Dene Tribe's article myself, I was concerned that it would be/was very similar to Mr. Snyder's Poker Tournament Formula. After reading it however, I actually found Tribe's article to be a simpler forumla (and different) from the one prescribed by Mr. Snyder. However, that being said, the topics are similar enough that Mr. Snyder should have been given proper citation as another author on the topic in my opinion.

[BigAlK]

[ QUOTE ]
When I first read Dene Tribe's article myself, I was concerned that it would be/was very similar to Mr. Snyder's Poker Tournament Formula.

[/ QUOTE ]

When I started reading I actually thought the opposite (that it would be significantly different than Snyder's patience factor calculations). My conclusion after reading it was that it was a vastly simplified version of Snyder. Snyder assigns a skill level classification based on blinding off your entire stack whereas Tribe's measures remaining stack at the end of the first hour. Essentially Tribe stops midway thru Snyder's process and assigns the classification at that point.

Whether this simplification gets you to the same place or not is just conjecture without running some comparisons. My guess is it depends on the specific structure. If blind level progression is smooth and levels are short probably. Snyder's formula gives a more precise number that can better differentiate between two tournaments with comparable skill levels. Whether this matters is up for debate.

I was surprised that when Tribe says, "You may have already seen complicated systems which require the complete tournament blind structure, but the beauty of my system is simplicity," that he didn't specifcally mention Snyder. That's who I thought of when I read this (although the statement isn't true since Snyder only requires a partial blind structure as well). I assume the 2+2 Magazine editor is aware of Snyder's patience factor and I know Mason is. The lack of acknowledgement or mention surprised me.

But what I found most interesting was the several times in the article where Tribe says that your strategy should change based on the speed of the tournament. He briefly discusses Harrington's zone system making it clear that he believes this is optimal for high skill tournaments. But in the introduction, conclusion, and body he implies that your strategy should be different in a faster (lower skill) tournament. He doesn't go into much detail as to what those changes should be although the implication is there in several places, the most telling being "that is a big change quick and the Skillful player should avoid this tournament or quickly adapt a very aggressive style early in the tourney to pick up the necessary chips for survival." I was beyond amazed to read this since Mason has always contended that tournament structure and speed have absolutely nothing to do with appropriate strategy.

[Arnold_Snyder]

Published where? Please provide your citation.

[Arnold_Snyder]

The revelation of my book is that fast poker tournaments are not crap shoots, but highly valuable for players who adjust their tournament strategy according to the structure of the tournament. The reason fast tournaments were considered crap shoots is because the published strategies were incorrect--losing strategies--for these events. My book provides a fast tournament strategy in which I have compiled a win rate of over 230% past 5 standard deviations.

In addition, my book is the first to provide a systematic method of assessing the skill value of fast tournaments.

[Troll_Inc]

[ QUOTE ]
Published where? Please provide your citation.

[/ QUOTE ]

I published it on my computer, and burnt a disc as proof.

I sent it around to a bunch of friends, probably about the same number of people who read your book.

You're lucky I didn't file a patent or trademark it.

[moo321]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Published where? Please provide your citation.

[/ QUOTE ]

I published it on my computer, and burnt a disc as proof.

I sent it around to a bunch of friends, probably about the same number of people who read your book.

You're lucky I didn't file a patent or trademark it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you actually citing this as proof? Can you get these friends to verify that they received this information in 2004? If you can, that's fine, but you have to admit "I wrote it on my computer" is pretty hard to believe.

And you also said that you did "tournament structure evaluation". Evaluating a "good" versus a "bad" tournament structure isn't anything new; it's specifically the strategy modifications based on the speed of the blind raises. Does your evaluation contain strategy changes related to the blind structure?

[Sherman]

After re-reading Tribe's article, I must admit that his system is an awful lot like Snyder's. I count two differences:

1) Snyder's calculates the patience factor as a function of how long it takes a player to blind out. Tribe's calculates (in the same fashion) a number based on playing for 1 hour.

2) From what I can tell, Tribe's rating system is different from Snyder's.

Otherwise, I have to admit they are awfully similar. In the world of academia, Tribe's article could not have been published without at least recognizing Snyder's work in the area.