Online Poker Study: The More Hands You Win, the More Money You Lose

[rosy2]

Quote from dtrader98:

Very interesting post, Swan Noir. Reminds me of a book I read stating that there is no way that the same group of players could statistically end up at the winning tables in many tournaments as they frequently do (considering the luck element). Your post corroborates much of that sentiment.

excuse my ignorance but how does his post corroborate your sentiment?

 

[dtrader98]

Quote from rosy2:

excuse my ignorance but how does his post corroborate your sentiment?

Quote from Swan Noir:
The reality is that most of the old timers who people see on TV and revere made their pile cheating. Brunson pretty much tells you that in his book. He talks about traveling with his partner from town to town before settling in Vegas. Well the minute you partner up and play at the same table you are cheating. Old habits die hard and the early days of NL hold'em in Vegas were filled with "irregularities".

I should have said, 'part of the post tended to corroborate...'
I can find the direct excerpt from the book I cited if you want.

Please don't get me wrong, there are some great and talented players out there, but there are also a lot of shady elements, IMO-- and the great thing about statistics is it generally doesn't lie.

 

[Swan Noir]

dt ...

Chip dumping is one of the most simplistic ways that groups take an edge. The concept is that if allowed (it clearly is not) a superior player would benefit from paying double or triple the entry price in order to get proportionally more chips. In the early stages a skilled player can use his stack against and to manipulate some very weak players (there are many early on) and pretty quickly have his skill backed up by a huge amount of ammunition.

By dumping their chips to a confederate, group members increase their odds in quite a non-linear fashion of one of them getting to the final table (objective one is being "in the money") and of winning it outright. The big names are now in the entertainment business in a major way and I suspect more careful as time goes on but I am sure secondary, yet very skilled players, have less to lose and more nerve.

Also the size (number of tables) of these events today might make dumping very difficult.

Quote from dtrader98:

Very interesting post, Swan Noir. Reminds me of a book I read stating that there is no way that the same group of players could statistically end up at the winning tables in many tournaments as they frequently do (considering the luck element). Your post corroborates much of that sentiment.

 

[The Big D]

Quote from Swan Noir:


The reality is that most of the old timers who people see on TV and revere made their pile cheating. Brunson pretty much tells you that in his book. He talks about traveling with his partner from town to town before settling in Vegas. Well the minute you partner up and play at the same table you are cheating. Old habits die hard and the early days of NL hold'em in Vegas were filled with "irregularities".

This isn't quite true. While many of the old Texas circuit games were not 100% clean, playing with a partner (ie. on the same bankroll) is NOT cheating if the other players at the table are aware of it and certain practices are avoided. In fact, it's extremely common in big games that various players have pieces of each other's action. It would be MUCH harder to pull together a big game if that wasn't the case.

The biggest reason to have a partner in the old days was to have a second gun in case of hijacking.

Top poker players are not particularly moral lot, but there's much more money to be made running an honest if sharp game. People like Andy Beale and Guy Laliberté wouldn't dump millions into games they knew to be rigged. Cheating is negative expectation at the top.

 

[The Big D]

Quote from Swan Noir:


Chip dumping is one of the most simplistic ways that groups take an edge. The concept is that if allowed (it clearly is not) a superior player would benefit from paying double or triple the entry price in order to get proportionally more chips. In the early stages a skilled player can use his stack against and to manipulate some very weak players (there are many early on) and pretty quickly have his skill backed up by a huge amount of ammunition.

This is simply false - in terms of tournament expectation, dumping chips is a losing proposition in a proportional payout tournament. The value of each chip decreases the more you have. You can prove it to yourself like this: Say you have a $10,000 tournament where each player gets T10,000 in chips to start. Each chip is clearly worth $1. Say there are 30 players, and the winner gets a 40% payout of the total buyins. So the total prize pool is $3m, and the winner will get $1.2m. Now, at the end he has all T3m chips, but they're only worth $1.2m. Clearly the value of the chips has declined as he accumulated them. You can use something called the "independent chip model" (ICM) to approximate the size of this effect. Google it.

This effect makes dumping chips a losing proposition. If you wanted to manipulate chips to increase your expectation, you would do one of two things: have a group of players "level" chips (basically, the opposite of dumping), or pocket chips late in one tournament and put them in play early in another. Straight up stealing chips from the tournament organizes (or an insider give chips to you) is also an option.

There's plenty of cheating in tournaments, but let's try to cheat intelligently, shall we?