I wish I could hide the big stacks (post-it note on screen?). It's even worse when the big stack is on a "rush" getting great hand after great hand.

I know things even out in the long-term, but it still annoys me, especially if it's an arrogant, rather than humble, player.

In the worst case I will seek out a confrontation with such a player to 'put him in his place'. For example I was in 25th place in a 400 person $55 buy-in $50,000 PKO tournament (progressive knockout), and another big-stack player's cockiness was starting to annoy me. So I confronted him with a shove of middle-set on a dry flop. The board paired the high card on the turn, he got a better boat, and I was finished.

Had I played rationally and 'emotionaly detached', I probably would have won ~$1000-$5000.

I think I'll re-read "The Tao of Poker" by Phillips (not the Zen one) ..it's very practical and helps me a lot.

Turn chat off.

Hi bdc:

This is one of the misconceptions as to how probability theory really works. Things do not even out in the long run. All you can say is that from this point in time on your expectation is to get the same number of good hands as anyone else. That's very different from evening out.

First, it seems to me that you got your opponent to put all his money in when he only had a few outs. That seems like a good play to me.

Second, your desire to target a particular player is rational play. This is one of the psychological errors that the poker mental coaches whom I'm so critical of often point out as they want to show that tilt comes in many forms and you need their help to fix it.

In poker, the best way to play is to try to maximize your expectation. But here you have made the rational decision to go after the person who annoys you as being more important than maximizing your expectation. I call this "pseudo tilt" which is very different from tilt. The following is from our book Poker and More: Unique Ideas and Concepts which I co-wrote with David Sklansky:

I haven't read this book so I don't want to comment on it. But are you sure it helps you or just makes you feel better?

Best wishes,
Mason

Thanks Mason.

Your reply was really great. Maybe I did play correctly in that specific hand, but sometimes my emotions get the better of me because I'm a very emotional 'hyper' person.

As for for "The Tao of Poker" book, no conclusions yet if it will help me.

Regards.

You didn't tell how big the bounties were relatively to the players' expected shares of the regular prize pool; I assume that the bounties were rather insignificant, as they usually are in the late stage of a PKO.

But anyway, specifically in a PKO, it's correct for big stacks to be more loose-aggressive than they'd be in a conventional MTT with the same stack size distribution. That's because the KO rewards make it more valuable for big stacks to win all-in pots, and the minimum equity that they need for an all-in race to be +EV to them is lower than in a usual MTT. Hence the 'cocky' plays by your opponent were likely correct.

Also, the correct strategy with a short stack in a PKO is more tight-aggressive than in a usual MTT, as a response to big stacks' natural loose play, as if the big stacks were recreational (even if they're in fact winning regulars, the stack sizes and the bounties force them to play loose anyway). In particular, your shove with a set on a dry flop was correct (+EV), or at least, you had to shove on one of the streets - there was no need to control the pot vs the big stack as they'd be willing to call you with a wide, weak range (having pretty any connection with the flop) and would have lost part of the interest in the pot if they had lost the hope for getting your whole stack into the middle in that hand and having a shot at your bounty.

On the other hand, if you had a marginal hand like a middle pair, it would usually be +EV for you to check/fold because that would allow you to save your stack for a while and, in a future hand, put it in with a large equity vs a loose big stack. This 'wait for a better spot' heuristic is explained by the fact that rake is paid once per tournament entry and you need to make the most $EV out of your entry before you're out and have pay the rake for another entry / tourney; but don't take this heuristic to the extreme - it applies to spots with marginal (close to 0) EV only, and you still have to take every opportunity that is significantly +EV like that middle set spot even if you have to risk your entire stack for that.

For the above reasons, you definitely shouldn't hide the opponents' stack sizes. On the contrary, in a PKO and in the early stage of a super-KO, I prefer to have the opponents' precise stack sizes at the start of the hand displayed boldly by my HUD, because whether my initial stack is bigger (even by 1 chip) than theirs matters a lot for my strategy for the current hand.

Speaking of, the current issue of the 2+2 magazine has an article about KO tourney strategy by Andrew Brokos.