Everything but the bracelet
So last Wednesday I figured I'd go play some poker in New Hampshire after some half-made and ill-remembered plans fell through. I got there in time for a rebuy/addon tournament. I almost didn't play, because I've never really learned what proper rebuy and addon strategy is.[1] But I entered... and I lost most of my stack with KK against AA... but I later doubled up and had about my initial stack when the addon deadline came at the end of the first hour... and I decided not to add on because I wasn't sure doubling my stack would really double my equity and thus justify doubling my stake (see footnote 1)... so I was relatively short-stacked after the deadline... but I remembered Dan Harrington's advice on how to play as a short stack[2], and managed to gain chips for a while, and ran pretty well, and got mentally into the zone... I just kept playing pretty well, and I noticed who was loose pre-flop and who would fold to aggression, and I paid attention to stacks so I knew who was desperate and who was conservative... Anyway I made it to the final table.
There had been 53 buyins and 35 rebuys/addons, for a total of 88 entries, and I was in the final ten. The payout table went down to nine players, so we quickly agreed unanimously to award a small prize to tenth place. (The money came out of the first place prize, lowering it from 25x the buyin to 23.33x the buyin. I have no problem with that. With 53 players, everyone at the final table deserves more than zero.) The guy with a very small stack thanked us graciously, and sure enough, he was gone soon.
I got into the top four with a bit of luck. My KQ beat the fifth place finisher's KK thanks to a flush. At that point the guy on my right had 1/2 the chips, I had 1/4, and the two other guys had 1/8 each. The big stack offered to split the prize pool (i.e. everything above four times the fourth place prize) so he got half and the rest of us got a third of the remainder. I politely balked at that. I can't do independent chip model math in my head, but surely with 1/4 of the chips my equity is more than 1/6! [3] Besides, ICM doesn't take into account player skill, and of the two short-stacked guys, I was pretty sure one sucked, and I had a good read on the other. Anyway, I shyly said no, and the three opponents huffed and puffed. They wanted to pressure me. I just stayed quiet and bashful, rather than say anything that would make them actively hate me. A player who hates you will, if he changes his strategy to punish you, almost certainly hurt his own chances - but he will indeed hurt your chances too. To prevent this, I avoided saying what I wanted to say: "You expect me to take the same money as these two? I have twice their stack! These guys suck! Get one out of the way and then maybe we'll talk."
So I successfully survived until the two short stacks had busted out, but it was the big stacked player who won their chips. So I had about 1/4 and he had 3/4. He offered me a deal where he got 5/6 of the pool. You can imagine my reaction to that. I offered my own deal where I got slightly over 1/4, but he was insistent. At this point even the dealer tried to talk me into settling: "Okay, let's make a deal. We could be here for hours," he said the instant it was down to us two. I presume he wanted to go on break or go home. I was pretty annoyed by that, and I almost called the floorperson over to make both the dealer and opponent shut the hell up. We played heads up for a little bit while my opponent gave me the occasional stinkeye. "I'm not trying to pressure you into anything, but..." he would say as he commenced doing exactly that for the tenth time. Also, I noticed he was lying, overestimating his stack size, to convince me that his rip-offs were fair deals. I knew there were 88 entries for 5k chips each, and I had 118k. So, no, sir, I highly doubt you have "nearly" 400k chips. I suggest you count again. I didn't actually say that.
Well, I guess this guy wasn't very confident in his heads-up play, because he started to worry when I started taking some of his chips. He wasn't aggressive enough. I made some stop-and-go bluffs on the flop, and he could have destroyed me by coming over the top on just one of those. But he didn't. Meanwhile I went all-in about five times - with anything from bottom pair on an ace- and king-less flop, to a pair of jacks I was praying he would challenge - and he never called my all-ins. In fact, by the time I had won just under 2/3 of the total chips, we still hadn't gone to the showdown once. And at that time, he offered me a deal where I got just under 2/3 of the total pool. Finally, a mathematically fair deal from this guy. I guess he was scared out of his mind. And by accepting more than half, I can now call myself the tournament's winner in my mind and on LiveJournal.
I took home 19 1/6 buyins[4] and he took 16 2/3.
Notice I have not mentioned specific dollar values here on the internet. Ask me in person or on the phone.
Let's just say it's a new personal record.
Let's just say, it was enough money that I decided to hide in the building for about fifteen minutes, just in case somebody who saw me get paid decided to wait for me in the parking lot. It was after 11 PM after all.
Let's just say, I expect to be in the black for all of 2011 if I never win another dime.
So, that's that. Anyone want to join me next time?
[1] Since then, I've read some posts in some forums, but none of the advice has been very well explained. I need a cogent decision process for figuring out when and whether growing my stack size from (Current) to (Current)+(RebuyOrAddon) is worth more equity than $(PriceOfSaidRebuyOrAddon). And for rebuys in particular, it would help if someone could logically explain how rebuying a stack of X - into a tournament where your average opponent now has substantially more than X - could ever be a better use of your money than simply entering an identical tournament later on. Because that's not intuitive to me. Al, any advice?
[2] Proper strategy changes based on your stack size, right? For example, if you have 2x the big blind, K3o looks good and 76s looks bad. Whereas if you have 50x the big blind, the opposite is true. Now if you have X and an opponent has 4X, you can't win his extra 3X, nor can he use that 3X against you. As far as you and your strategy is concerned, it's as if those 3X chips aren't even there. But for him, he has to worry about all the other players too. For him, his extra 3X chips definitely matter. He has to play a big-stack strategy. And as he plays proper big-stack strategy against the others, folding K3o and playing 76s, in your short-stack universe he is actually making errors. Which means you profit. In a cash game, walking into a deep-stack table with a minimum buy-in is actually a pretty good recipe for success. And in a tournament, should you have the misfortune of finding yourself short-stacked at a table, you'll at least have the same principles working for you - except, of course, you have to make your moves faster than the blinds increase, and you don't have the luxury of buying back in.
[3] Sure enough, I looked it up later and my equity was actually slightly greater than 1/4. The math depends on the payout structure, but 1/6 of the pool for 1/4 of the chips is a rip-off in just about any realistic tournament.
[4] Except I tipped the dealer $20.
There had been 53 buyins and 35 rebuys/addons, for a total of 88 entries, and I was in the final ten. The payout table went down to nine players, so we quickly agreed unanimously to award a small prize to tenth place. (The money came out of the first place prize, lowering it from 25x the buyin to 23.33x the buyin. I have no problem with that. With 53 players, everyone at the final table deserves more than zero.) The guy with a very small stack thanked us graciously, and sure enough, he was gone soon.
I got into the top four with a bit of luck. My KQ beat the fifth place finisher's KK thanks to a flush. At that point the guy on my right had 1/2 the chips, I had 1/4, and the two other guys had 1/8 each. The big stack offered to split the prize pool (i.e. everything above four times the fourth place prize) so he got half and the rest of us got a third of the remainder. I politely balked at that. I can't do independent chip model math in my head, but surely with 1/4 of the chips my equity is more than 1/6! [3] Besides, ICM doesn't take into account player skill, and of the two short-stacked guys, I was pretty sure one sucked, and I had a good read on the other. Anyway, I shyly said no, and the three opponents huffed and puffed. They wanted to pressure me. I just stayed quiet and bashful, rather than say anything that would make them actively hate me. A player who hates you will, if he changes his strategy to punish you, almost certainly hurt his own chances - but he will indeed hurt your chances too. To prevent this, I avoided saying what I wanted to say: "You expect me to take the same money as these two? I have twice their stack! These guys suck! Get one out of the way and then maybe we'll talk."
So I successfully survived until the two short stacks had busted out, but it was the big stacked player who won their chips. So I had about 1/4 and he had 3/4. He offered me a deal where he got 5/6 of the pool. You can imagine my reaction to that. I offered my own deal where I got slightly over 1/4, but he was insistent. At this point even the dealer tried to talk me into settling: "Okay, let's make a deal. We could be here for hours," he said the instant it was down to us two. I presume he wanted to go on break or go home. I was pretty annoyed by that, and I almost called the floorperson over to make both the dealer and opponent shut the hell up. We played heads up for a little bit while my opponent gave me the occasional stinkeye. "I'm not trying to pressure you into anything, but..." he would say as he commenced doing exactly that for the tenth time. Also, I noticed he was lying, overestimating his stack size, to convince me that his rip-offs were fair deals. I knew there were 88 entries for 5k chips each, and I had 118k. So, no, sir, I highly doubt you have "nearly" 400k chips. I suggest you count again. I didn't actually say that.
Well, I guess this guy wasn't very confident in his heads-up play, because he started to worry when I started taking some of his chips. He wasn't aggressive enough. I made some stop-and-go bluffs on the flop, and he could have destroyed me by coming over the top on just one of those. But he didn't. Meanwhile I went all-in about five times - with anything from bottom pair on an ace- and king-less flop, to a pair of jacks I was praying he would challenge - and he never called my all-ins. In fact, by the time I had won just under 2/3 of the total chips, we still hadn't gone to the showdown once. And at that time, he offered me a deal where I got just under 2/3 of the total pool. Finally, a mathematically fair deal from this guy. I guess he was scared out of his mind. And by accepting more than half, I can now call myself the tournament's winner in my mind and on LiveJournal.
I took home 19 1/6 buyins[4] and he took 16 2/3.
Notice I have not mentioned specific dollar values here on the internet. Ask me in person or on the phone.
Let's just say it's a new personal record.
Let's just say, it was enough money that I decided to hide in the building for about fifteen minutes, just in case somebody who saw me get paid decided to wait for me in the parking lot. It was after 11 PM after all.
Let's just say, I expect to be in the black for all of 2011 if I never win another dime.
So, that's that. Anyone want to join me next time?
[1] Since then, I've read some posts in some forums, but none of the advice has been very well explained. I need a cogent decision process for figuring out when and whether growing my stack size from (Current) to (Current)+(RebuyOrAddon) is worth more equity than $(PriceOfSaidRebuyOrAddon). And for rebuys in particular, it would help if someone could logically explain how rebuying a stack of X - into a tournament where your average opponent now has substantially more than X - could ever be a better use of your money than simply entering an identical tournament later on. Because that's not intuitive to me. Al, any advice?
[2] Proper strategy changes based on your stack size, right? For example, if you have 2x the big blind, K3o looks good and 76s looks bad. Whereas if you have 50x the big blind, the opposite is true. Now if you have X and an opponent has 4X, you can't win his extra 3X, nor can he use that 3X against you. As far as you and your strategy is concerned, it's as if those 3X chips aren't even there. But for him, he has to worry about all the other players too. For him, his extra 3X chips definitely matter. He has to play a big-stack strategy. And as he plays proper big-stack strategy against the others, folding K3o and playing 76s, in your short-stack universe he is actually making errors. Which means you profit. In a cash game, walking into a deep-stack table with a minimum buy-in is actually a pretty good recipe for success. And in a tournament, should you have the misfortune of finding yourself short-stacked at a table, you'll at least have the same principles working for you - except, of course, you have to make your moves faster than the blinds increase, and you don't have the luxury of buying back in.
[3] Sure enough, I looked it up later and my equity was actually slightly greater than 1/4. The math depends on the payout structure, but 1/6 of the pool for 1/4 of the chips is a rip-off in just about any realistic tournament.
[4] Except I tipped the dealer $20.