Poker Perambulation

I enjoy reading Glenda’s stuff. When she wins she isn’t full of herself. When she loses she looks at her game before looking elsewhere. I think all there fixate on their competition more than is prudent. But, let’s face it, we all do that. Just what do we have control of in life and poker? Hindsight always shows us it was more than we’d thought and less than we’d like.

Plus and minus EV get thrown around with the idea all we want and embraces with joy is being +EV. If you 1040 identifies you as a professional gambler, that had better be the case. For the rest of us, it is a mixed bag.

Most of the time we’re -EV by the time we sit down at the table. Glenda may have been when she bought into that 100K that she likes so much and plays regularly. How can I say that? She is a good player with solid expectations. That is a nice piece of change. It is a big guarantee. What’s not to like?

Well, first she tells us there are 23,826 runners. The fact that it is a 100K guarantee doesn’t mean bupkus. The prize pool is over twice that. I was chatting with JB the other day and he was glowing about a 17K he’d finaled in. It was on Bodog as I recall and had a huge overlay. It was a more costly tournament. But all that house money in there made it really +EV.

‘Poor Glenda’ went out as those left approached 3000. That’s -EV isn’t it? But wait! She made the money and that is +EV. Well, she put in hours and what she made wasn’t even minimum wage. Is that -EV? I wonder how many enter a tournament and don’t look at how the site pays out? Some mix things up and have a flat payout for one and a top weighted for others. Does the payout structure favor your game? I think it did with Glenda.

What else can we assume from the raw data? Well, there are guidelines that pretty much avoid how many runners are playing. It is the rare NL tournament that doesn’t lose something in the area of 50% in the first hour. But that many runners are going to extend the tournament beyond typical time for one with a few hundred playing. Where’s your strength?

One of the things that we agonize over is our strength. We do have a type of play that we favor. When we shift gears, few of us are going from our A game to our A game. Most of us are comfortable with a tight-aggressive game or image. Turbos or late blinds penalize tight. Late blind are always abusive. In turbos and huge fields they become ABUSIVE. If we’re honest, we are at a disadvantage at some point in any tournament against better players.

In tournament play, all can be rewarded. Being Loose-Aggressive is a mold that fits players like TonyG, Gavin Smith, and Gus Hanson. Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and “Action Dan” Harrington would be seen as tighter players. We only see their hands when we see them in final or featured tables. That is a minor part of an entire tournament. The only one who gives us near full access to their thinking is Harrington in his books. Humm, he is playing ratty hands and even pushing them. It is all a mix of perspective and necessity.

For those of us who’s gear change moves us from our A game to a B or even C game, selecting the game or structure that lends itself to that game is a greater necessity. But that is an interim solution. What we need to do is move down and try to play that B or C game to improve it. And that is another -EV situation but with a +EV goal.

I’ll conclude by saying we’re all donkeys. That goes for the big names and the fellows in the play money games. The difference is frequency. Frequency is hard to identify fully for most of us. Even with analysis tools it is hard. Each hand has a life of its own. Our average session alone features a lifetime of decisions.

ADDENDUM:

I’ve played about everything there is to play at poker. I’d like to say that I’m a solid player at all those variations. But I can’t. I can say I’m above average but average isn’t anyone’s goal. I bring strengths and weakness to every session I’ve ever played. In many the game selection is limited. This is especially true in tournaments. My idea isn’t to dominate the world. My goal is incremental improvement. At that I succeed at times and fail at others. That’s the world of Donk and God. I’ve seen Doyle play poorly and well on TV and can say that about just about any pro. If that’s the case, I have a hard time complaining against those who inhabit my games.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Tournaments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.