Tournaments - a team effort?

I'm sure this has been covered in some articles or other threads somewhere. But, lately I have been considering where to focus my time/efforts/cash to maximize profits.

In doing so I began to think about risk verses rewards and how in tournaments the risk is distributed and the rewards are shared. In essence, the better players are inadvertently teaming up to share the rewards as they collectively eliminate the lesser players. Am I wrong, is my logic flawed?

As an example...a tournament of 150 players, $50 buy-in. Approximate prize pool of $6750. Skill levels of novice, intermediate, advanced, and expert for this level of tournament. For purposes of the discussion we assume 10 experts, 20 advanced, 40 intermediate, 80 novices for the distribution. And we also assume equal distribution across the tables.

So as the tournament begins, by default the experts and advanced players are working together to consolidate the chips. As the tables are consolidated the percentage of novices and intermediate players go down relative to the experts. Final table you hypothetically end up with all the chips, 2 experts, 3 advanced, 4 intermediate, and 1 novice. 20% of the experts make it, 15% of the advanced, 10% of the intermediate, an less than 2% of the novices.

Now the key here, is as a cash player I can only play against 9 other opponents at a given time. I only get dealt so many hands an hour and I can't capitalize on all the novices sitting at all the other tables in the room. But in a tournament it is an agreement that states, "You take as much money off the novices at your table, I will take as much money off the novices at my table, then later on we will meet at the hideout, lets call it the final table and divy up all the booty" Done with a large enough pool of novices the experts reduce their risk/variance and increase their profits.

Thoughts? Is this a no brainer, an "of course tournaments are lower risk and more steady than cash?" What am I missing?

Well, don't forget that on line poker is rigged.

As the MTT progresses, the novices will get knocked out first and most often, followed by the ever increasing skilled players. Therefore, by your reasoning, and playing the odds as it were that the skill will carry people on to the final table more often than the weak players, the tables will get progressively tougher. This will lead to having less people at your table that will make mistakes often. This will happen before the final table, and before you cash.

Meanwhile, if you have a good soft cash game table, the bad players will just reload and your expected win rate would never go down due to being moved to another table.

tho its true the well known very good tournament players stay away from the other very good tournament players early if possible, no one is purposly teaming up... sure there might be friends who team up, but both of these players could very well be novices as well... in the end, if say the 2nd best player in the tournament has to play a hand against the best player in the tournament, by all means he will do so... bringing up the idea that they team up is just stupid.

Interesting theory. I'm not sure that it's any different than a ring game though - except that in a ring game you can change tables if it's too tough and stay if it's soft.

Tournaments are probably the best value for money in online poker at the moment because so many fish are attracted by the large prizepools.

However I dont totally agree that the tables get gradually tougher. What makes tournaments so juicy is that even the expert players can get knocked out leaving more fish in the tournament. Even at a few fish can make it the final table. But maybe your theory is holds more truth at a $50 buy in tourny.

I was at the final table of a $3 rebuy recently and finished 3rd to the biggest fish in the tourny. This guy was unbelievable, calling all ins with 78s and worse putting bad beats on everyone at the table. I dunno how this guy got this far in the tournament. I did make a bad mistake against him 3 hd as everytime i raised he would reraise me all in. I eventually made a stand with KJ when i shouldnt have since the other guy in the tourny was so short stacked.

Anyways enuough rambling

I think tournys could be the way to go!

I particurlaly like the rebuys because after the break there is some deepstacked play delaying the crapshoot till a bit later.

I appreciate the feedback...I have been playing some cash, some tournaments. It just seems the cash games are so much tighter with a higher risk/reward structure. Granted as pointed out by Effexor, as a tournament goes on the competition gets better, but a tournament has time limits which force players to make decisions. In cash games too many players seem to only play premium hands.

I have a better example. Take luck completely out of the situation. Chess is a game of perfect information (relatively speaking, you still don't know what the other player is thinking). There are grandmasters and people just learning to play the game. Which would be the preferred scenario by the grandmaster, (1) play 150 chess games at $50 per, and win $6750 or (2) play 7-8 chess games (single elimination) and win a percentage, lets say 40% of the overall, so $2700? If you are the grandmaster, is it not in your best interest to allow weaker players to collect the money for you from other weak players, rather than playing them each individually?

I guess, and maybe others disagree, but the risk/reward of tournaments is lower risk/higher return than ring games if you happen to be on the grandmaster side of the equation. If you play in tournaments where the entry fees attract players of lower skills than yourself, then the time invested for the potential reward will be greater than at a cash game.