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Thursday, January 10, 2013

The Big Poker Question (Or Luck vs Skill II)

First of all, here are my stats from last month's Las Vegas trip. This is a good example of the topic of this post.

Donkaments < $100: 8 tourneys, 3 chops/wins, +$1005, 173% ROI

Tournaments >=$100: 5 tourneys, 0 cashes, -$860

Cash Games: -$104, 18.5 hrs

Pit Play: -$108

2012 was my first losing year as a poker player. There were various factors, including running terrible in Omaha-8 games (-$1187, 66.5 hrs, 26 sessions). I also lost a decent chunk in Pit games (again), although it was a little less than 2011.

But the biggest factor in my losing year was the tournaments, and that's what this post will focus on. Here are the numbers.

Donkaments <$100: 183 tourneys, 49 cashes, 30 wins/chops, +$5438, 43.9% ROI

Tournaments >=$100: 69 tourneys. 6 cashes, 4 wins/chops, -$7466, -46.1% ROI

It's a little staggering how vastly different these stats are, but they have always been different for me. So I went through the numbers, and divided the +$100 tourneys into two groups.

$100 - $300: 60 tourneys, 6 cashes, 4 wins/chops, -$1806, -17.2% ROI

Over $300: 9 tourneys, 0 cashes, -$5660

Certainly a big difference, and a $5660 hole is almost impossible to climb out of for a part-time recreational player like me.

So the natural question to ask is "Why is there such a difference?" Could I be doing something wrong? I'm crushing donkaments, so I obviously have some clue what I'm doing at a tournament table. There may be some small adjustments that I can try, but any thinking poker player will keep trying small adjustments to their game.

So is it variance? Well, I've said in the past that my larger buy-in tournament have a much smaller sample size compared to the donkaments. But every year the sample size gets a little bigger, but the results haven't improved.

However, "Pros" keep telling us just what a huge factor variance is in Live Tournament Poker. Online grinder head to the WSOP, and might get two small cashes in 30 events. They don't worry about it because 30 tournaments is what they play on a normal online Sunday (at least, back in the good old days).

Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi had a incredible run in 2005 & 2006 with just over $5m in tourney cashes. In the WPT, he had four TV Final Tables with two victories. In the WSOP, he had ten cashes over those two years. He was Card Player's Player Of The Year for 2006, and many Pros considered him one of the top players in the world.

The following few years, Mizrachi did basically nothing. He played on the tournament circuit, and had some cashes, but nothing worth mentioning. That was until the 2010 WSOP, where he won the $50k Players Championship and made the November Nine. Was this long period of nothing due to him playing badly or was it variance?

Another lesser known pro, William (Bill) Edler, was Bluff Magazine's 2007 Player Of The Year. He won $2.75m in tournaments, including a WPT Championship and a WSOP Bracelet. The following year, he went 0/2008. He did not have a single cash on the tournament circuit. Was it due to playing badly or running bad in 2008? Maybe he ran like God in 2007? Or maybe it was some combination of all three, but how could anyone know?

This brings us to the main point of this thread, and my Big Poker Question...

If variance (luck) is such a huge factor in Live Tournament Poker, does that mean skill is a such a small factor? 

Yes, if you play in fields against players who don't understand tournaments, then you definitely have a skill advantage, and over "The Long Term" you will win more money more often then your opponents. That is a main reason that I crush donkaments.

But as you play tournaments with larger buy-ins and bigger fields, you play against players who have some concept of tournaments. They may not be that advanced, but they will make less mistakes than a donkament player. It will take longer to win money over "The Long Term" because there are bigger fields to weave through, players make less mistakes, and you will run into the occasional player who will make some advanced plays.

But the problem with "The Long Term" in Live Tournament Poker is that nobody can say just how long it is. How many hundreds or thousands of tournaments does one need to play to get to that theoretical "Long Term"? If we never really hit "The Long Term" in Live Tournament Poker, does it mean that we just have to run good at the right times (get lucky), and make less mistakes than our opponents?

One of my poker sayings is, "How to win a poker tournament... Catch a few cards, and don't screw-up." I say this somewhat in jest, but I'm starting to think this saying is way too true.

3 comments:

CdrData said...

The "long run" is somewhere between 3000-5000 MTTs. Statistically, it's not that hard to be a 40% ROI player and lose money over 2000 MTTs played.

Not easy when most of us don't play over 100 MTTs per year.

It's not a question of whether your ROI is positive - it's whether your ROI is high enough to overcome live variance.

Food for thought: http://www.nsdpoker.com/2011/01/mtt-pros/

CdrData said...

Here's one theory:

In donkaments, if you know basic hand values and how to short-stack shove, that should be good enough.

In mid-level tournaments, you need to know how to 3-bet light, reship at 25 BBs, and respond to reships. That should be enough for $200-$1500 buy-ins.

hiphop said...

I want to know how many "recreational" players play 252 tournaments in one year? Sicko