Money to Burn

Just found this on the Poker Listings site.

Daniel Negreanu told PL.com reporter Martin Derbyshire about a $5 million bracelet bet between Ivey and his fellow Full Tilt bigwig Howard Lederer.
It's an even-money bet that will take place over the next two years of WSOPs. Ivey's betting that he can take down two bracelets in that time. Lederer is not convinced.
Ivey will likely play close to 80 bracelet events in that time and puts himself at better than 40 to 1 to win the average WSOP event. Considering he won two bracelets in as many weeks in 2009, and had a three-bracelet year back in 2002, two bracelets in two years is eminently achievable.
What does everyone think, who got the best of this bet? If there's one thing I've learned in the last few years, it's not to bet against Phil Ivey.

Bub definitly got the short end of that stick. Maybe he's betting that Ivey's stamina will run out or something? IMO I think betting against Ivey to win two more in the next two years is akin to throwing your money away.

I think he won't do it. 2 wins in 80 tourneys. I would put my money on him not making it.

I think Ivey can do it. A very skilled player determined to accomplish something. You can bet he will give it his very best. Time will tell.

While I have huge respect for Ivey, winning 2 bracelets in 2 years would be kind of amazing. He had a great season last summer but that does not mean he'll do as well this year. I think it's a fair bet either way.

If they were betting on cashes, even final tables, I wouldn't bet against Ivey. But wins? Bracelets? Luck has a way of messing one's plans...

if i had some money to burn, i would bet that Ivey wont take down 2 bracelets in the next 2 years.

I give Ivey about 70% for making it... 80 events, lots of them with not many players and a poker god like Phil Ivey... it's absolutely possible!

If nothing else, it makes Ivey an even better bet for the Full Tilt fantasy poker league

I don't think he will do it, but he may target some of the smaller events with only a few hundred players in the less played variants, so you never know. One thing Ivey has going for him is he's very good in all variants of poker and not just a one trick pony like Hellmuth. Still going to be very hard.

I see Ivey as eventually overtaking the record for most bracelets he has 7, record is 11)... so, I can see him doing this.. He took 3 down in one year (2002).. and 2 down last year.. I don't see why he couldn't do it again.

Though, even if I had money to burn.. I wouldn't take the bet on either side.

I believe the odds are heavily in Howard's favour however there are a bunch more High buyin Events coming up ($25k) where there'll be fewer entrants & therefore increased odds of Ivey taking a bracelet.

I'd put my money behind Howard on this one.

Don't mean to get off subject here, but doesn't this bet give some idea of just how much money those main guys at Full Tilt are making? Howard is not winning any money from playing poker, so the fact that he could pay off a $5,000,000 bet just screams of the cash he is raking in from FT.

FWIW I'd say there's a big, big chance that neither player will ever pay the full $5m - one of them will probably lose their nerve at some point and buy out for a lower amount, same as Ivey is supposed to have done recently on his vegetarian eating bet with Tom Dwan.

This is a bit like betting against Tiger. It's not likely he will win the next major but who who is going to say someone else will?

As for Ivey, I recall him talking once about how he gets bored with small bets and that the only betting that interests him has to be so large his hands shake.

Hmmmm. That's kinda scary. Guess he's into it for the gambling rush. Good thing he wins some of the time.

My own hands start to shake at pretty small amounts.

Does anyone know the real math for this bet? It's not as simple as 1 in 40. If he wins his 10th tournament then he'll have 70 more to win another, and if he wins in his 65th he'll have only 15th more.

buttgirl

Having googled to see what the bookies thought I found out that Ivey has been making prop bets on his performance for a long time now. I can see why he is so motivated.
As for actual odds. He was set at 80 to 1 to win the main event in 2010. I was unable to find odds on other events he was in. My take is that even money for him not to do it is definitely in Lederer's favour but if Ivey can win one early then lookout.

My guess is the odds are on Lederer's side, but Ivey's got 2 years to win 2 bracelets. Based on his past performance Ivey has a very good shot at it. Especially if he plans on getting into as many events as physically possible. But Im sure the straight up odds are against him.

Ivey's such a good player, and if he'll play a lot of events he can definitely achieve it.
I think I'll side with Ivey on this bet.

I believe John Vorhaus referred to the shaking hand syndrome as "Endorphin

Shock" I suspect all the highrollers get more and more de-sensitised as the

stakes go up. I guess it is all relative.

More to the point, you can see why he's not really motivated when he doesn't have millions in side bets riding on a tournament...

i mean i say that its more than likey that it won't happen. But ivey is an awesome player and i believe he has a good chance! TEAM IVEY! YAY!

Leaderer will make more than $5M on just the publicity for Full Tilt with Ivey being everywhere.

Smart bet.

I had to take a shot at this, as it's good practice for my stats research.

This is a Bayesian statistics question. Specifically, if you assume that there is some probability associated with Phil Ivey winning a single event (and that the probability is constant across games and tournament sizes, arguably and admittedly not true), you can derive that number using Bayesian inference.

Say his probability of winning an event is given as p(win) = x, where x is some value in the range 0 and 1 (0 is dead money, 1 is a lock on the bracelet). You want to consider the probability that he'll win either 0 or 1 bracelets out of the 80 tournaments he plays in. You can look at the opposite side, but then you need to consider the probability that he wins 2 bracelets, 3 bracelets, 4 bracelets ... 79 bracelets, and 80 bracelets. That's more work. Beh! And anyways, say that we want to assume that both sides got money in good on the bet, and it's a coin flip - 50% of the time he hits it, and 50% he doesn't. What are the odds that he wins a given tournament?

Bayesian inference states that for the times that he wins k bracelets in 80 tournaments (for some value k), we use the following:

80Ck * x^k * (1 - x)^(80-k)

where C is the binomial coefficient, how many combinations of k can you choose from 80. If k is 1, it's like saying "how many ways can you choose one element from 80," and specifically, "how many individual tournaments do we need to consider if he wins one tournament, but we don't know which one." The answer for k = 1 is 80, since he could win any of the tournaments. The last two terms deal with the probability that he won k tournaments (x to the power of k), and the probability that he lost 80-k tournaments (1-x to the power of 80-k). Since we want 0 and 1 wins, solve the following:

80C0 * x^0 * (1 - x)^(80) + 80C1 * x^1 * (1 - x)^(79) = 0.5

This simplifies to:

(1 - x)^80 + 80x * (1 - x)^79 = 0.5

If you solve for x there, x works out to be about 0.0209. If you say that the bet is even, Ivey's percentage of winning any tournament is roughly 2.09%. The chance that he'll win zero out of eighty tournaments is about 18.5%, and the chance that he'll win one out of eighty tournaments is about 31.5%. Two or more is just about 50%.

If he wins one early, we'd need to revise the numbers. For example, if he won the 15th tournament, and we still believed our original value for the probability that he wins (2.09%), we have 65 more tournaments for him to win a single one. The chance that he doesn't win a tournament in 65 is:

65C0 * x^0 * (1 - x)^65 = 0.2534

So the chance that he doesn't win another tournament after winning the 15th is about 25.3%, and the chance that he does win jumps up to about 74.7%.

Gosh, I hope the math is right on that one.

I thought they were both putting in 2.5 to make 5 mil???

No the loser pays the winner 5 mil. Unless one ends up buying the other out before it's completed.

swrittenb (http://www.cardschat.com/members/swrittenb/) I just took my stat test on Bayes' Formula, and all of your assumptions seem reasonable. I would say that this is pretty sound math. You can obviously make some different assumptions, which would change the outcome, but I think all in all you did a fine job. Glad you did it because I was about to try as well.

Now all you need to do is draw the Venn Diagram

If for nothing else, this sidebet is going to make him do it..., goooo Ivey!

Ivey just won his 8th bracelet last night in Event #37 $3,000 HORSE tournament... has 1 more to go to win this challenge.. and he's not even halfway there, yet.

I think he's going to do it.

Howard has got be be very nervous now.

I wonder how much Ivey will charge him to get out of the bet.

$1 million seems fair.

Congratulations. You have just convinced me to think twice, then three times, then again before ever taking a statistics class.

Can you tell me the probability I will take a statistics class if I have to think about it four times?

wow ,it seems to be a no brainer but you never know and alot of games left.

Ivey won a bracelet and he said he's now in the lead WTG Ivey

Take there money LOL

Phil Ivey will win this bet, he has a bracelet already, I think I player of his level can accomplish getting two.

I think ivey will do it. 2 bracelets can and will be achieved. Good luck Ivey!