Online poker is not Rigged. There's no such thing as bad beats in MTTs!

Online poker is NOT rigged. There are NO bad beats in MTTs. You can’t win a tourney, only survive a tourney.

I want to start with the last statement first. You can’t WIN a tourney. What I mean by that is simply, there is no hand before the final table that can win a tournament. Not one. I see all these bad beat stories here about hands in the first hour or on the bubble that if they wouldn’t have gotten sucked out on, they would have won or done better, yada, yada, yada. When it comes to tourneys, a change in mentality will go a long way.

The people who win tourneys didn’t actuality win. They SURVIVED. They were the only one who didn’t bust out. If you go into tourneys trying to win everyone’s chips, you’re going to fail. The only thing you can and are supposed to do is lose all your chips. Because that’s what’s statistically supposed to happen. Tourneys with their freezing out of rebuys and their increasing blinds structure are designed to get rid of people. It’s the nature of the beast. If you try to win people’s chips, you will lose yours faster.

Cash games are about winning. Tourneys are about SURVIVING. And the only hands that matter in a tourney are the hands where all your chips are in the middle of the pot. Those are the hands where if you lose, you’re out, you’re gone, you’re busted. And each time, you put all your chips in the middle, no matter how good you put them in, you’re tourney survival rate decreases.

Let’s say you have Aces and are up against a smaller pair for all your chips. Your about 80% to win which is awesome. But run that scenario 5 times where one loss equals you busting out and you get

80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% = 32% all five Aces hold up.

So even though you are the overwhelming favorite in each individual hand, you only have a 32% chance to stay alive!

I railed a winning internet pro to watch him play. In a tourney of 1459 players, he made the final table and I wrote down the hands he had to put his whole stack on the line prior to the final table. He had ten hands whether preflop, after the flop or after the turn he put all his chips in:

100% x 91% x 81% x 41% x 71% x 65% x 81% x 53% x 81% x 64% = 3%

For him to make the final table, he had a 3% chance of SURVIVING all his all ins. He had a 97% chance to bust out of the tournament. His making the final table is equivalent to someone hitting a 1 outer. Let’s say his 10 hands were AA versus a small pair.

80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% = 10%

So even if he was lucky enough to get AA versus smaller pair every showdown he’d still be only 10% surviving to the final table. As, you can see, there are NO BADBEATS in tourneys. The only bad beat is actually surviving to the final table.

The real skill in tourneys is simply to accumulate chips in order to keep up with the rising blinds and antes thus lowering your amount of allin hands which greatly improves your survival percentage. If you go looking for trouble, trouble’s going to find you. You can’t win. You have to keep surviving til you’re the last man standing. The tourney is designed to bust you. It’s a long shot. It’s a lottery. That’s why $10 gets you $10,000 if you survive or $200 gets you $200,000.

The great tourney players know how to survive tournaments. That’s what separates them from great cash players. They’re not going all in preflop in the first hour or trying to steal all the time. They’re extremely patient, very selective about the times they go allin and aggressive. That’s the key to SURVIVING tourneys.

So please, next time you bust out, don’t break nothing or come here to complain. Probability wise, you had very little chance going into the tournament. The only BAD BEAT in tournament poker is if you tell me you made the final table or won the whole thing because the odds of doing so are so small. Those are the stories I want to hear.

Shylax that was a very good and well thought out article. Everyone should read your article at least once to get the point about their mtt "bad beats".

It is a hard fact to swallow that even with AA you have a very high risk of busting out but it's something you have to deal with in MTT.

So please people, like Shylax says...save your comments for final tables or wins.

Sorry but the first post in this topic basically goes against what most of the top mtt pros advocate. I'm by no means an expert in mtts but the goal is to accumulate chips not to just sit back and NOT bust. The difference in tourneys/cash games is not winning chips vs. surviving it's about the fact that chipEV is not always equal to $ev and being able to recognize and apply the differences.

edit: although you're right about mtts not being rigged

re-edit: actually re-read the post again and it's not as bad as I originally thought. Sorry I was a bit harsh but I think the underlying thing about the difference between cash and tourneys is wrong and a very common misconception

zachvac said:

but I think the underlying thing about the difference between cash and tourneys is wrong and a very common misconception

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I have to go with the OP on this one and say that there is a hage difference in the way that you should play a Cash game and a Tourney.

I don't think Pot odds come into it in tourneys. You cant say;
"I am a 53% fav so I have to call."
It doesn't work like that. You can't re-load and keep playing.

It just takes one hand to knock you out, so try and make it a hand that happens when you are in the money.

Tournament play is about Survival and Chip accumulation. But Survival has to take priority.

zachvac said:

Sorry but the first post in this topic basically goes against what most of the top mtt pros advocate. I'm by no means an expert in mtts but the goal is to accumulate chips not to just sit back and NOT bust.

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Zach,

I stated that my definition of survival is accumultaing chips to keep up with rising blinds and antes so that you don't have to face as many all in situations which increase your probability of busting.

I'm not advocating sitting back. I'm saying to accumulate for your survival. Not to bust someone or take crazy chances. Be very patient, be very selective and be aggressive when you do play.

E.G.

Early tournament, everyone has an M of over 20, you have KK and someone goes all in preflop. You're probably well ahead of any range of hands this maniac has. But will calling and winning this hand win you the tournament? NO. Could you get knocked out here? Yes. Will doubling up at this stage really improve your chances of survival? Maybe. So why call this? Later on when there's varying M's and it really improves your chances of going deep, yes, but at this stage why risk it.

Or how about in the middle stages where someone goes all in and it will cost you half your stack to call to knock this person out. A lot of people instacall because they want to knock someone out but why race for half my stack when if I'm patient, I can get my stack in under better conditions. I count tell how many times I've seen players with healthy stacks calling off huge chunks of their stacks trying to knock people out.

That's what I mean about thinking about the best way to accumulate for survival vs winning chips. And all the top MTT pros have the same definition of surviving.

Juanda "I'll never play a big pot without a big hand. And top pair top kicker is by no means a big hand."

Negreanu "Call me crazy but I need to at least see a flop before I put my whole stack in the middle."

Top MTT pros are patient, very selective in the situations they get involved in and play those situations agressively. That's the point I'm making.

Shylax said:

Early tournament, everyone has an M of over 20, you have KK and someone goes all in preflop. You're probably well ahead of any range of hands this maniac has. But will calling and winning this hand win you the tournament? NO. Could you get knocked out here? Yes. Will doubling up at this stage really improve your chances of survival? Maybe. So why call this? Later on when there's varying M's and it really improves your chances of going deep, yes, but at this stage why risk it.

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Because it massively increases your chances of making a significant cash and dramatically reduces the chance that you will have to put all your chips in the middle in a far more marginal situation.

There's a huge difference between TPTK postflop (even with AK) and KK preflop.

zachvac said:

Sorry but the first post in this topic basically goes against what most of the top mtt pros advocate. I'm by no means an expert in mtts but the goal is to accumulate chips not to just sit back and NOT bust. The difference in tourneys/cash games is not winning chips vs. surviving it's about the fact that chipEV is not always equal to $ev and being able to recognize and apply the differences.

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There are two main theories about how to win tournies. The old school is exemplafied by TJ Cloutier, who tries to survive, and the new school is exemplafied by Gus Hansen, who tries to accumulate chips. I think it's a bit judgmental to dismiss the old school with a statement like "most of the top mtt pros". Nobody has won more mtts than Cloutier.

very insightful shylax i pretty much agree with you on everything except talking about bad beats. some people need to vent and talk about it to get over, i myself dont even get mad because it poker it happens.

Just to add the structure of the MTT is also critical. If it's the 10k Sunday "big" structures (or the deepstack events that Negreanu is referring to) then it plays completely different to your basic 1500 chip tourney, where any edge must be exploited fully.

Very good post which makes a lot of sense. MTT's aren't about the maths. if you go all in, you have a chance of goin all out, no matter how big a favourite you are.

Of course the easiest way to stop yourself form getting it all in until YOU want to be, is accumulating chips and staying ahead of the curve.

GDRileyx said:

There are two main theories about how to win tournies. The old school is exemplafied by TJ Cloutier, who tries to survive, and the new school is exemplafied by Gus Hansen, who tries to accumulate chips. I think it's a bit judgmental to dismiss the old school with a statement like "most of the top mtt pros". Nobody has won more mtts than Cloutier.

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well if you're going to compare cloutier's approach in today's fields with gus hansen's approach in today's fields you ought to compare their results across the same time span, instead of giving cloutier the HUGE advantage of including several more decades of play, and tournaments with much, much, much smaller fields like in the old days

since the poker boom (2003), who has won more tourneys? who has won more money in MTTs? who has had more success? it's gus for all 3 and it's not even remotely close

Man, I never thought of it like that and i love to play MTT's. This should help me place in them. You would suggest the same style of play when it comes to bounties, because i notice the big stacks will always call a short stack with trash just so they can suck out for the bounty. Nice article Thanks.

Shylax said:

I railed a winning internet pro to watch him play. In a tourney of 1459 players, he made the final table and I wrote down the hands he had to put his whole stack on the line prior to the final table. He had ten hands whether preflop, after the flop or after the turn he put all his chips in:

100% x 91% x 81% x 41% x 71% x 65% x 81% x 53% x 81% x 64% = 3%

For him to make the final table, he had a 3% chance of SURVIVING all his all ins.

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Wow, that's amazing that in a tourney of 1459 you just happened to pick one of the final 9 guys. That's almost like winning the tourney yourself.

smd173 said:

Wow, that's amazing that in a tourney of 1459 you just happened to pick one of the final 9 guys. That's almost like winning the tourney yourself.

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I hate this 7 post a day limit

Anyway,

I've been railing 3 pros for some months now, taking notes and trying to figure out what they do right and what I'm doing wrong. I have my notebook and an odds calculator next to me to see how good they're putting their money in.

Anyway, I've seen this guy bust out WAY more than he wins. But when he wins, he wins a ton of money.

Anyway, I've sat down and watched him at least 50 times and he's made the final table about 5 times. This was his latest time so it urged me to write this post.

The big thing is, he's just not stupid with his chips. He definitely got lucky once in this particular tourney where put in his chips after the flop with only a 41% chance to win but he was desperate at that point. The rest of the time he was very patient and just picked his spots. And he rarely shows crap cards when he showdowns.

It's extremely boring watching other people play. Especially this guy because he rarely plays a hand especially in the first two hours. But once the blinds and antes get up their, he's crazy aggressive raising everything trying to steal. He usually gets to accumulating late second to early third hour on.

If you have the stamina to watch someone else play, go for it. I've defintiely picked up some stuff.

Irexes said:

Because it massively increases your chances of making a significant cash and dramatically reduces the chance that you will have to put all your chips in the middle in a far more marginal situation.

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Let's assume a 1000 man tournament with 3000 starting chips. The money is 200 players. That's 3,000,000 chips. By the time of the money, the average stack will be 15,000.

Now back to our example. First hand, maniac pushes 55 and you have KK. You pick him off and are now at 6,000.

If the average stack at bubble time will be 15,000, how will having 6,000 chips in the first hour massively increase your chances of making a significant cash or dramtically reduce the chance of you having to put all your chips in the middle in a far more marginal situation?

That's why they say early tournament, AA KK and all those other big hands win small and lose big. It doesn't take you significantly closer to where you need to be to cash and it can end you're tourney early.

I say let him have the 30 chips or whatever the small and big blind are and wait for a better spot.

shylax2009 said:

I say let him have the 30 chips or whatever the small and big blind are and wait for a better spot.

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you're not going to find better spots!! common to popular belief, it's not that easy to just skill your way into getting everyone's chips when they're drawing dead or nearly dead, especially in tourneys when the blinds are constantly growing and pressure is exerted on everyone to make things happen

a 70% edge is HUGE. an 80% edge is AMAZING! every good tournament player in the world knows this. ask 100 of the best and close to 0% (and i'm really hoping 0%) would want to pass up a 70% edge at the beginning of a tournament

i appreciate the post, but you're very misguided on this point

shylax2009 said:

Let's assume a 1000 man tournament with 3000 starting chips. The money is 200 players. That's 3,000,000 chips. By the time of the money, the average stack will be 150,000.

Now back to our example. First hand, maniac pushes 55 and you have KK. You pick him off and are now at 6,000.

If the average stack at bubble time will be 150,000, how will having 6,000 chips in the first hour massively increase your chances of making a significant cash or dramtically reduce the chance of you having to put all your chips in the middle in a far more marginal situation? It's only 4% of a stack you will need to make the money comfortably.

That's why they say early tournament, AA KK and all those other big hands win small and lose big. It doesn't take you significantly closer to where you need to be to cash and it can end you're tourney early.

I say let him have the 30 chips or whatever the small and big blind are and wait for a better spot.

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A better spot than KK v 55? Can you give an example?

An early double up in a tournament should more than double your chance of making the money. The longer it takes to double the less value your chips have when you eventually do.

Chipstack value is entirely relative to the blinds and the stacks of the other players.

I'd never fold KK preflop, ever (certain contrived situations in satellites aside). But I only cash about 22% of the time in MTTs so I'm probably doing it wrong

shylax2009 said:

I hate this 7 post a day limit

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Creating multiple accounts to get round it isn't the answer.

Don't do it again.

Bigsmak said:

I have to go with the OP on this one and say that there is a hage difference in the way that you should play a Cash game and a Tourney.

I don't think Pot odds come into it in tourneys. You cant say;
"I am a 53% fav so I have to call."
It doesn't work like that. You can't re-load and keep playing.

It just takes one hand to knock you out, so try and make it a hand that happens when you are in the money.

Tournament play is about Survival and Chip accumulation. But Survival has to take priority.

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See this is the exact thing that is pretty much wrong based on everything I've read about on mtts from people who are pretty solid. In fact early in the tournament plays almost exactly like a cash game. Please substantiate why reloading has ANYTHING to do with it. Is this the only tournament you'll ever play in your life where if you don't make the money you'll die? Every decision in both an mtt and a cash game is about maximizing the expected money you will make. These get very different down the road close to the bubble and into the money, but for the most part if you talk to good tournament players they are talking about odds of calling, implied odds, and all the other things cash players consider. The fact that you can rebuy in a cash game should have absolutely nothing to do with the difference. The goal is to maximize the expected value of the situation you are in. When you start talking about survival being big without discussing how to do it (and without talking about how most of the things you probably are talking about basically maximize your itm% but minimize your roi, meaning you may make some money a lot but not ever hit those big scores that is crucial for mtt players) it's hard to discuss. There are certainly spots where you would stack in a cash game and fold in a tourney. There are also spots you would fold in a cash game and stack in a tourney. I wrote a rather lengthy thread on this so I won't elaborate too much more, but it's in the poker strategy section.

shylax2009 said:

Let's assume a 1000 man tournament with 3000 starting chips. The money is 200 players. That's 3,000,000 chips. By the time of the money, the average stack will be 15,000.

Now back to our example. First hand, maniac pushes 55 and you have KK. You pick him off and are now at 6,000.

If the average stack at bubble time will be 15,000, how will having 6,000 chips in the first hour massively increase your chances of making a significant cash or dramtically reduce the chance of you having to put all your chips in the middle in a far more marginal situation?

That's why they say early tournament, AA KK and all those other big hands win small and lose big. It doesn't take you significantly closer to where you need to be to cash and it can end you're tourney early.

I say let him have the 30 chips or whatever the small and big blind are and wait for a better spot.

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Are you familiar with icm? Basically it's hardly used in the early stages because chip value is very close to the money value anyway, but as a background basically you can use it to determine how much of an expectation you have with given chip stacks in a tourney (assuming equal skill). For example say you enter a $5 tourney with 100 people. Before a single hand is dealt you have an even chip stack and if you worked out the icm math you would have a $5 expectation. There are icm calculators online you can try out but basically when you have twice the amount of chips as everyone else that far away from the bubble, you have roughly double the expectation in the tourney (so that $5 is now a $10 expectation).

So 20% of the time you win 0 and 80% of the time you roughly double your expectation. You are saying you should turn that proposition down just because the 20% might come up?

Also on most of these things I'd trust that Rex knows what he's talking about. Pretty sure he's been playing mtts longer than I've been alive .

Shylax said:

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Let’s say you have Aces and are up against a smaller pair for all your chips. Your about 80% to win which is awesome. But run that scenario 5 times where one loss equals you busting out and you get

80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% = 32% all five Aces hold up.

So even though you are the overwhelming favorite in each individual hand, you only have a 32% chance to stay alive!

I railed a winning internet pro to watch him play. In a tourney of 1459 players, he made the final table and I wrote down the hands he had to put his whole stack on the line prior to the final table. He had ten hands whether preflop, after the flop or after the turn he put all his chips in:

100% x 91% x 81% x 41% x 71% x 65% x 81% x 53% x 81% x 64% = 3%

For him to make the final table, he had a 3% chance of SURVIVING all his all ins. He had a 97% chance to bust out of the tournament. His making the final table is equivalent to someone hitting a 1 outer. Let’s say his 10 hands were AA versus a small pair.

80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% x 80% = 10%

So even if he was lucky enough to get AA versus smaller pair every showdown he’d still be only 10% surviving to the final table. As, you can see, there are NO BADBEATS in tourneys. The only bad beat is actually surviving to the final table.

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These equations trouble me. I think they are misleading, as every hand is discrete and the odds of winning confined to that one hand... next hand is a new story. To combine probabilities from a number of hands goes against the laws of probabilities most commonly applied in poker, which view each hand statistically as a separate, or discrete, phenomenon.

Makwa said:

These equations trouble me. I think they are misleading, as every hand is discrete and the odds of winning confined to that one hand... next hand is a new story. To combine probabilities from a number of hands goes against the laws of probabilities most commonly applied in poker, which view each hand statistically as a separate, or discrete, phenomenon.

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I think he is right.

The odds of Aces holding up is 80%. That is true for any hand, no matter what has happened before.

The point he is making is that if you go all in with aces, 3 times in a row.

The chance of you being successfull by the end of the third hand is about 51%

Its not that the odds alter on the hand you are playing, rather it is taking into account the fact that you had a 20% chance of loosing the first hand, and a 20% chance of loosing the second and now you have a 20% chance of loosing the current hand.

It dosen't mean that you play the hand any differently .. the odds of winning this hand are 80%.. but the odds of being in this position are only 64% and if you win this hand, then the odds of you being in that position are 51%

yeah I can agree with that..sometimes blaming the site is just a way to deal with the loss..I know Iv said that a few times but if I really belived it was rigged why would I ever go back

Makwa said:

These equations trouble me. I think they are misleading, as every hand is discrete and the odds of winning confined to that one hand... next hand is a new story. To combine probabilities from a number of hands goes against the laws of probabilities most commonly applied in poker, which view each hand statistically as a separate, or discrete, phenomenon.

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Yes every hand is discrete. But to get where you want to be i.e. the final table and beyond, it's the total probability of surviving your all ins.

For example:

Let's say I give you a coin and tell you to flip 3 heads in a row or I blow your wife's brain out. What's the probability she doesn't die? Yes each toss is 50/50 but the probability you flip 3 heads is 1/8 or 12.5%.

Now, with a tourney, going in you don't know beforehand how many times your going to put your whole stack in the middle. But if you get to a final table and /or win, look at your hand history, calculate the winning probabilities of all the times your stack was in the middle and calculate the total probability and see just how lucky you were that all your hands held up.

The more times you go all in, the less your chances of surviving the tourney, no matter how good you put it in. So yes, even though each hand has a discrete probability there's also a conditional probabiity to be aware of. Cash games don't have that problem because the blinds never increase forcing decisions for whole stacks based on varying M zones and pot odds. And if you lose your stack in a cash game, just reload and start over. So in cash games, individual hand probabilities are discrete.

The rising blind and ante structure is how the tourney gets rid of players by forcing all in situations as the only course of action. That why it's imperative to accumulate so that you still have options available to you throughout the tourney thus increasing your survival rate. That's what Harrington's M Zone analysis is all about.

MTT = Small ball, little risks to keep up with blinds and antes. Like you said all-ins are risky and not needed (preflop). Like the article though. It is about surviving. And I have seen sooo many bad beats and people getting soooo pissed, but hey, it was their choice to risk all their chips. Also, all you need is a chip and a chair in those, if you do get beat up, one of larger stacks can easily double you up, so stay patient and SURVIVE! Nice post.