sam1chips
Visionary
Silver Level
Hello all,
Ok so i just first want to say that this is my perception of the effect of players not showing up to tournaments, and if any of you want to dispute/agree/add on to what i say then please do!
I guess the tournaments I am referring to are the freeroll tournaments, with no entry barriers and a relatively large player pool, there are usually a decent amount of people who don't show up. Their hands are just ante-folded.
I'm sure this has happened to everyone. The tournament starts, and there are still 3 or 4 people that have the "sitting out" text over there dulled table space. There are several effects of this that I've found...
-First of all, although there are technically 10 people at the table, there are only 6 or 7 actual hands that you are worried about (because the other ones would be ante-folded) so you can ultimately play the hand as if it were 6-handed or 7-handed. This tends to benefit the more aggressive players, and the players who are more comfortable with loosening their playing ranges.
-There is also a big effect on positional play, depending on where the absent players are located at the table. For example, if there is a player who is sitting out at your RIGHT, it can benefit you because you can essentially be "on the button" for two hands in a row {when the absent player is on the button and auto-folds, it is basically like you're on the button. and then the next hand you are actually on the button}. By the same logic however, you will be first to act two times in a row.
-If there is an absent player to your LEFT, it can benefit you because if you are on the small blind, and they are on the big blind, and the table folds to you, you can raise and the dead hand will auto-fold. It is a nice spot to be in.
With absent players being forced to put in blinds, I like to think of that as "dead money" since it is coming from a "dead player" so to speak. I've found that some people may raise more when trying to steal the dead money pre-flop, and the mind game becomes similar to what you are thinking when someone tries to steal your blinds. For example, if person to your left is absent and they are the big blind, and you are the small blind...table folds to the button and the button raises x3 or x4 BBs...one of the things I'm thinking is they are trying to steal the absent player's "dead money" BB, as well as my small blind.
Ok, so I think I just covered a lot of how the no-show players effect the single-table that I am sitting at. Now I am going to speculate as to how it effects the tournament as a whole...
One of the tournaments I am going to reference is the intertops freeroll tournament. This tournament has runs twice a day, it has 250 players (1500 starting chips) and the top 8 get tickets to another tourney...
Regularly, out of the 250 entrants, at least 35-50 of them are no-shows for the entire tournament. If you can think of all of the chips in the entire tournament, there is a certain percentage of chips that are "dead chips", that are just going to be put into the blinds until the absent players have no chips left.
It is actually kind of funny. If these tournaments start at 7:00, it will be around 8:10 or so that the "dead players" end up getting actually eliminated from the tournament (due to being blinded until they have no chips left). The total players remaining will shrink from about 90 players left at 8:10 to about 40-45 at 8:20. All of a sudden.
Now think about the consequences...in the span of about 10 minutes the average chip stack will double. So if you are right around the average chip stack at 8:00, you are most likely significantly lower than the average chip stacks of present players (since at that point there are plenty of absent players with about 200 chips left).
This next part might be confusing...I'm not fully sure it is right but here it goes:
After all of the absent players get eliminated (say there are 50 people left), those 50 people are holding the chips of the 200 people that got eliminated (BOTH absent players and non-absent players). The blinds level in this situation would be signifcantly lower than it would be in the second scenario...when there are 50 people left, but all 250 people were present, and there was no dead money. Therefore, you might be able to assume that the higher percentage of people who are no-shows at a tournament, the more patient the other players can be, since the average chips will be higher and the blinds level will be earlier.
If you read all of that, thank you. I'm not sure if this can teach anybody anything, but hopefully this will at least get people thinking. Also, please comment about if you agree or disagree or don't understand!
Ok so i just first want to say that this is my perception of the effect of players not showing up to tournaments, and if any of you want to dispute/agree/add on to what i say then please do!
I guess the tournaments I am referring to are the freeroll tournaments, with no entry barriers and a relatively large player pool, there are usually a decent amount of people who don't show up. Their hands are just ante-folded.
I'm sure this has happened to everyone. The tournament starts, and there are still 3 or 4 people that have the "sitting out" text over there dulled table space. There are several effects of this that I've found...
-First of all, although there are technically 10 people at the table, there are only 6 or 7 actual hands that you are worried about (because the other ones would be ante-folded) so you can ultimately play the hand as if it were 6-handed or 7-handed. This tends to benefit the more aggressive players, and the players who are more comfortable with loosening their playing ranges.
-There is also a big effect on positional play, depending on where the absent players are located at the table. For example, if there is a player who is sitting out at your RIGHT, it can benefit you because you can essentially be "on the button" for two hands in a row {when the absent player is on the button and auto-folds, it is basically like you're on the button. and then the next hand you are actually on the button}. By the same logic however, you will be first to act two times in a row.
-If there is an absent player to your LEFT, it can benefit you because if you are on the small blind, and they are on the big blind, and the table folds to you, you can raise and the dead hand will auto-fold. It is a nice spot to be in.
With absent players being forced to put in blinds, I like to think of that as "dead money" since it is coming from a "dead player" so to speak. I've found that some people may raise more when trying to steal the dead money pre-flop, and the mind game becomes similar to what you are thinking when someone tries to steal your blinds. For example, if person to your left is absent and they are the big blind, and you are the small blind...table folds to the button and the button raises x3 or x4 BBs...one of the things I'm thinking is they are trying to steal the absent player's "dead money" BB, as well as my small blind.
Ok, so I think I just covered a lot of how the no-show players effect the single-table that I am sitting at. Now I am going to speculate as to how it effects the tournament as a whole...
One of the tournaments I am going to reference is the intertops freeroll tournament. This tournament has runs twice a day, it has 250 players (1500 starting chips) and the top 8 get tickets to another tourney...
Regularly, out of the 250 entrants, at least 35-50 of them are no-shows for the entire tournament. If you can think of all of the chips in the entire tournament, there is a certain percentage of chips that are "dead chips", that are just going to be put into the blinds until the absent players have no chips left.
It is actually kind of funny. If these tournaments start at 7:00, it will be around 8:10 or so that the "dead players" end up getting actually eliminated from the tournament (due to being blinded until they have no chips left). The total players remaining will shrink from about 90 players left at 8:10 to about 40-45 at 8:20. All of a sudden.
Now think about the consequences...in the span of about 10 minutes the average chip stack will double. So if you are right around the average chip stack at 8:00, you are most likely significantly lower than the average chip stacks of present players (since at that point there are plenty of absent players with about 200 chips left).
This next part might be confusing...I'm not fully sure it is right but here it goes:
After all of the absent players get eliminated (say there are 50 people left), those 50 people are holding the chips of the 200 people that got eliminated (BOTH absent players and non-absent players). The blinds level in this situation would be signifcantly lower than it would be in the second scenario...when there are 50 people left, but all 250 people were present, and there was no dead money. Therefore, you might be able to assume that the higher percentage of people who are no-shows at a tournament, the more patient the other players can be, since the average chips will be higher and the blinds level will be earlier.
If you read all of that, thank you. I'm not sure if this can teach anybody anything, but hopefully this will at least get people thinking. Also, please comment about if you agree or disagree or don't understand!