Age Old Question! Tournament pros vs Cashgame pros - Page 2

Every hand in a tournament is important just as every hand is important in a cash game. The difference is the variance is dynamic in a tournament. As you progress through a tournament your weight or value in it increases, so say you're 80% through the field and only top 10% pays. You may have an average stack and 5x the buy-in in value at that moment, but you can still lose it in a hand. At an FT in a large field tournament the weight can potentially be hundreds of buy-ins over individual hands.
I played over 10k tournaments in 2009 over about 8 months and it's true that a single standard deviation of my bottom line could be $50,000, but if you break things down you see certain consistencies as far as ITM rate over time, graph of placement by %, etc. Playing tournaments with ridiculous field sizes is kind of like playing the lottery with a bit of an edge. I'd say a couple thousand of the tourneys I played were 180-man sngs and you can pretty clearly see a solid winrate with greater 1st place finishes than anything else. These kind of help stabilize some of the variance while you're trying at big scores.
So I think tournaments have a completely different feel and technique and are a lot better for people that have more gamble in them.

the answer is more simple wobbly.

Tournament = less blinds, more opponents on the table, cant re-buy = much simpler form of poker


Thats why deep HU is the most complex form of poker there is...

the fact they cant rebuy makes emotional manipulation much less of a factor too.

well... i agree w/ you overall but think your argument is way too over simplistic and pretty shitty. using your ballpark numbers if every player were equal skill they'd make the final table 1.8% of the time. so how does someone make the final table 6% of the time if only the final table matters? also, to weigh all cash game hands the same is retarded. quick example: 160 hands 1 tabling a sunday major w/ good players sweating/discussing is obviously going to be way more valuable skill/experience wise than 160 hands mindlessly grinding 20 tables of 250+ buyin stakes. same w/ 4 tabling a sicko hu to the death versus the ladder. etc etc etc.

this is a boring/played out argument anyways. just can't pass up the call wobbly a retard in hopes of him losing his cool and entertaining everyone freeroll.

ps. that comic strip is enough entertainment in itself haha

On October 28 2010 19:31 Baal wrote: the answer is more simple wobbly. Tournament = less blinds, more opponents on the table, cant re-buy = much simpler form of poker Thats why deep HU is the most complex form of poker there is... the fact they cant rebuy makes emotional manipulation much less of a factor too.

ding. well said and 4 lines.

On October 28 2010 19:22 jchysk wrote: Every hand in a tournament is important just as every hand is important in a cash game. The difference is the variance is dynamic in a tournament. As you progress through a tournament your weight or value in it increases, so say you're 80% through the field and only top 10% pays. You may have an average stack and 5x the buy-in in value at that moment, but you can still lose it in a hand. At an FT in a large field tournament the weight can potentially be hundreds of buy-ins over individual hands. I played over 10k tournaments in 2009 over about 8 months and it's true that a single standard deviation of my bottom line could be $50,000, but if you break things down you see certain consistencies as far as ITM rate over time, graph of placement by %, etc. Playing tournaments with ridiculous field sizes is kind of like playing the lottery with a bit of an edge. I'd say a couple thousand of the tourneys I played were 180-man sngs and you can pretty clearly see a solid winrate with greater 1st place finishes than anything else. These kind of help stabilize some of the variance while you're trying at big scores. So I think tournaments have a completely different feel and technique and are a lot better for people that have more gamble in them.

This post and baals post are pretty much the only posts that make any sense. But like I said, i've already said I'm not saying tournament pros are all bad most of them are just unproven winners. And yes if you grind out the big sng games with smaller fields yes it is more possible that you are a great poker player.

What your saying is, everyhand is significant because in tournament poker the 90% of time you played for 10% of value and the rest 10% of time you play for 90% value thus the total value played out avg per hand is the same as cash game. But the problem is that the 10% of value im saying is pretty much meaningless and insignificant to your bottomline compared to 90%. You can run super super bad in those ITM/FT hands and cause all the run good or play good in the first 90% of hands to mean absolute shit. So I'll say it again, there are good poker players who only play MTTs but we dont know who they are. The majority of the MTTs are unproven.

On October 28 2010 16:18 lostaccount wrote: LOL WOBBLY i know you are good at poker but there is more important things the money and poker. who gives a shit if they are called a pro, donk, bitches, pussies, luckboxes. Just care about your own goals and morals. who gives a shit about other thinks about others. i mean poker is already stressful enough thinking for yourself, now you want to have a debate on a useless topic. Just use your common sense, no one gives a shit about these little things, well maybe btiches do.

What makes you think I care what other think, If I did I'd be a suck up like everyone else in this world. This topic is far from useless, If I'm right people who play MTTs only may be saved a lifetime of wasted time and be enlightened.

On October 28 2010 16:17 gawdawaful wrote: Theres probably some form of flaw or circular logic going on here but I'm not smart enough to find it. But how can you arbitrarily say only ITM/FT tables affect your bottom line/are important? Suppose the most unluckiest tourney pro gets bubbled every single tournament on a KK vs AA or AA vs KK suckout, does he not play a single important hand at all in the year? Of course thats a super extreme example, but I feel like hands leading up to ITM also have some weight. Maybe, I'm hoping someone can if thats the case and enlighten me. People run into coolers and setups just as often in cashgames On the other hand, if a FPP pro plays 3million hands playing 6/6 at FR or something equally as ridiculous, meaning he only plays 180k hands, how does that compare with someone who plays 1million hands at 22/18 or what have you? not sure what you mean here I think at the end of the day, who cares what route one chooses to take to make money so long as its within the legal route. For a cash game pro to shit on tourney pros for not being real pros is akin to having a live pro shit on online pros, or having someone with a normal 9-5 shit on poker players for being lucky degenerate gamblers. I think there is a definitive better type of poker pro and I think its online cash game grinders > online MTT grinders > live players and if there is sound logic behind it why shouldn't we care. 9-5 compared to poker is comparing apples and oranges tho imo.

On October 28 2010 19:31 Baal wrote: the answer is more simple wobbly. Tournament = less blinds, more opponents on the table, cant re-buy = much simpler form of poker Thats why deep HU is the most complex form of poker there is... the fact they cant rebuy makes emotional manipulation much less of a factor too.

All true but your off tangent. I'm saying tournament pros aren't proven winners!

On October 28 2010 22:05 wobbly_au wrote: What your saying is, everyhand is significant because in tournament poker the 90% of time you played for 10% of value and the rest 10% of time you play for 90% value thus the total value played out avg per hand is the same as cash game. But the problem is that the 10% of value im saying is pretty much meaningless and insignificant to your bottomline compared to 90%.

But you have to apply that same principle to cash games as well. You can't weight and/or apply rules to one set of hands without applying those same bounds to the other set of hands. You haven't standardised the data as far as I can see so your comparison is unfair. You may be getting the correct result but it is based on flawed working.

I feel sorry for tournament pros. I would rather have a joe schmo job than be forced to do the tournament grind. Playing 15 hours a day every day seems soul crushing.

One good thing about being a cash game player is I can wake up, take care of all my bills before lunch, and jerk around for the rest of the day.

huhu's gif won this thread

On October 28 2010 23:35 Funktion wrote: Show nested quote + On October 28 2010 22:05 wobbly_au wrote: What your saying is, everyhand is significant because in tournament poker the 90% of time you played for 10% of value and the rest 10% of time you play for 90% value thus the total value played out avg per hand is the same as cash game. But the problem is that the 10% of value im saying is pretty much meaningless and insignificant to your bottomline compared to 90%. But you have to apply that same principle to cash games as well. You can't weight and/or apply rules to one set of hands without applying those same bounds to the other set of hands. You haven't standardised the data as far as I can see so your comparison is unfair. You may be getting the correct result but it is based on flawed working.

Ur completely wrong here, please read what I wrote several times again.

as the author of the comic strip I give my stamp of approval on the blog. it's obv correct.

the thing about tournaments is that the lack of a "long run" makes it more appealing for fish looking to hit the lottery, so the sklansky dollars are going to be absurd for anyone good that can grind them

furthermore you have a lot of nit random grinders who couldn't beat .5/1NL fullring for that $50/hourly but CAN beat mtts for $50/hour, so which one are they gonna pick, obv tournaments DERP.

On October 29 2010 02:41 Its Clayton wrote: as the author of the comic strip I give my stamp of approval on the blog. it's obv correct. the thing about tournaments is that the lack of a "long run" makes it more appealing for fish looking to hit the lottery, so the sklansky dollars are going to be absurd for anyone good that can grind them furthermore you have a lot of nit random grinders who couldn't beat .5/1NL fullring for that $50/hourly but CAN beat mtts for $50/hour, so which one are they gonna pick, obv tournaments DERP.

loving the comic, do you have moar?

a lot of big tournament players=huge luckboxes imo

cash game takes much more skill obv, agree with baal

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a rofl gif is worth an entire thread.

I wouldn't do it by any weird calculation of what hands they play are important.

It's harder to know long-term whether your a winner or loser in tournaments because it's hard to play enough of them. Even at 12,000 tournaments a year that's a pretty small sample size. If we're talking about live tournaments I don't think anyone can play enough of them in their life to know whether they're really that good or they just got lucky to notch a couple huge scores in the 30 or so live events they play per year. I'm not really sure how many live tournaments the average circuit grinder plays including smaller events leading up to main events but yeah still nowhere near enough to get past simple variance.

On October 28 2010 15:04 SirBlotto wrote: i like this argument.

how does the "tagging" part work on nude laser tag?

that would make a great forever alone lol

On October 29 2010 17:26 The M Show wrote: that would make a great forever alone lol

I made this one a while ago :D: