my chip value vs my opponets

I used to think Helmuth was kinda a donk after watching him fold soooo many hands where his odds of winning more than justified a call and he knowingly folded.

Finally i heard him say "you don't think that my chips are worth four times what everyone else's are?" and it made me start thinking.

the mathematical side of me kept shouting "put your money in!" but once i started thinking about it what he's saying is why put it in as a small favorite with the right odds when i, being a better player, can get it in as a large favorite?

it's interesting to think about. is sacrificing the small edge worth waiting for the larger edge? it's sure made me rethink stacking off early-early/mid of tournaments with marginally good decisions.

feedback pls

Greg Raymer recently wrote an article about this, saying his style differs from players like Hellmuth's in that he is willing to take the small edges but PH is not. Obvioulsy both are successful, so I think it comes down to a question of personality and style. I myself tend to lean toward the PH side of the equation, as I have not had a lot of success "gambooling" with a worse hand because the money odds dictated it was the right play. I do try to balance it depending on where we are in the tournament, however (giving up slight +EV spots early is fine with me).

Cash games (which I play), I absolutely disagree. You don't choose one or the other. If someone offers you $5 do you say "nah, if I keep walking someone else will just offer me $20"? No, you take the $5, and then if someone offers you $20, you take that too.

Tournaments on the other hand are completely different. I always say, never get into a coin flip situation early on. The thing is, if you lose you're out and if you double up you haven't doubled your chances of winning. I'm sure you've heard that each chip is increasingly less valuable. So the ones you give up in the coin flip if you lose are worth way more than the ones you win if you win the coin flip. Assume it's early and you're not in the money. For the ev calculation to be in your favor, assuming even chip stacks, you would have to have an expected win of about double your prize money. So say you're in a tournament where (somehow) you think you can win $5 per tourney in the long run. You have to believe that with double your chip stack you'd be able to win $10 per tourney in the long run. Otherwise, it's not worth the risk. ev calculations are different in tournaments.

zachvac said:

Cash games (which I play), I absolutely disagree. You don't choose one or the other. If someone offers you $5 do you say "nah, if I keep walking someone else will just offer me $20"? No, you take the $5, and then if someone offers you $20, you take that too.

Tournaments on the other hand are completely different. I always say, never get into a coin flip situation early on. The thing is, if you lose you're out and if you double up you haven't doubled your chances of winning. I'm sure you've heard that each chip is increasingly less valuable. So the ones you give up in the coin flip if you lose are worth way more than the ones you win if you win the coin flip. Assume it's early and you're not in the money. For the ev calculation to be in your favor, assuming even chip stacks, you would have to have an expected win of about double your prize money. So say you're in a tournament where (somehow) you think you can win $5 per tourney in the long run. You have to believe that with double your chip stack you'd be able to win $10 per tourney in the long run. Otherwise, it's not worth the risk. ev calculations are different in tournaments.

Click to expand...

Very possibly Zachs best post. Hope it reads as good for you as it did for me. Hit several nails directly on the head.

This leads to a theory, ICM (independent Chip Model{ing}), that describes (so far in boring detail) how in a cash game your chips are worth a specific, non changing value. In a tournament however your chips represent proportional values, and change as the field changes. If you win all the chips, you do not win all the money. I'm hoping someone who understands this much better than I can write an exciting , easy to understand treatise on ICM. I have not read all existing articles, and the ones I have read (3 or 4) were pretty dry reading.

google Independent Chip Model for a gaggle of sites.

As you can see for yourself, the concept seems extremely important, but the explanation challenges my ability to parse out what is being said.

yeah cash games are not the topic i didn't really specify that.

Although i slightly disagree with you on this.

"if you lose you're out and if you double up you haven't doubled your chances of winning"

Harrington's calculation is exactly that. your chips divided by total chips in play multiplied by your skill advantage/disadvantage(no real way to calculate that part)

but what i'm really trying to get at is very hard to compute into math. i'm saying are these sick seemingly bad laydowns that helmuth makes actually good plays given that he can without a doubt(in his mind at least) get his money in so good that he recoups for his losses by doing so. i dunno, i dont know how anyone would go about calculating it but it interests me.

sorry for the delayed response, multitabling

Of late I have been uber-tight. This has led to me not losing so many coin tosses, and on average getting deeper in most of the STT, and MTT's I've been playing. My logic goes along these lines;

Why should I risk everything on a coin flip, when I can wait patiently for a situation where it will be more like 3 out of 4 times I will prevail largely because I know 3 of those coins are double headed coins?

I am primarily a STT/MTT player. So my thinking tends toward survival.

yeah but it's beyond coin flips and blah blah. he's in a lot of situations where he SHOULD gamble and he doesn't....yet he's still one of the best if not the best tournament player in the world.

maybe it's just his shinanigans getting to me but there seems to be something more to it.


gotta go to work and deal poker and watch ppl play reallllly bad 3/6 kill. hah i'll check back later