why do i become the topic..

Mike M won a freakin bracelet in a rebuy and he's saying they suck. Negreanu bubbled one not too long ago... a 100k? and he says the same thing.

but we got peeps here saying "if you don't like it don't play it".

Well, look.. You either play what the casino gives you or find another career. Slot machines pay out 95% and a poker tournament pays out maybe 5% but that's not good enough. They gotta squeeze harder.

..buncha masochists..

Wasn't Matusow's point that rebuys are unfair because they encourage collusion? If so, he's 1000% right. Let's say I suck at poker and my buddy is awesome - I can keep rebuying and dumping my stack to him, pretty much guaranteeing him a deep run. Or let's say I get short after a bad beat - I can just go up to one of the big stacks and offer to dump to him for $100.00.

That's why I personally will never play a rebuy event. But if you're not worried about collusion and you enjoy rebuy events, it's up to you if you want to join.

Bubble play is much different because with bubble play there's an actual mathematical reason for people to be very risk averse in many situations. Many plays that are +ev in chips will be -ev in actual money due to the payout structure and the stage of the tournament.

During the re-entry period of a re-entry tournament where additional entries are equal to original entries, anything that's +ev in chips is usually also going to be +ev in actual money, other than in some weird cases that are mostly hypothetical. So, if someone wants to go crazy and tard off a bunch of chips, its only beneficial to the people that get to make a bunch of +chipEV plays as a result, no matter how much money that person has.

The more you make poker just an elitist game for the rich and very well off to splash around buy in after buy in until they luck box into chips, the less anyone can talk about POKER BEING A GAME A SKILL, its one or the other and lately, all I hear is welfare for the rich in poker is better for the game.

1) I don't think people want welfare for the rich. re-entries allow richer people to spew more money away that is about it.

2) re-buy events don't allow people with more cash to win more. What you are implying is wrong. If people are splashing away buy ins, than this will actually make players that would lose in a normal tournament win. Its pretty much the opposite of what you are saying actually.

3) Winning in poker has nothing to do with winning a tournament, or winning hands. Its about the bottom line. The bottom line does not increase if you enter 7 times into a re-entry. re-entry and spewing money is about as smart as going all in with any two cards every hand just win the most amount of hands possible. While you would win the hands you would not win at poker. Just the same, if you win a poker tournament does not mean you are a winning poker tournament player.

4) Yes it is important that poker remains a skill game. If not there is no reason for the game to exist, as gambling can be done much more effective in other gambling games such as slots or table games. Skill game means that some players can win at the game or beat the game. Poker is different in that way from other gambling games such as blackjack which is also a skill game but cannot be beaten. Poker however can become a simple gambling game, like blackjack if the rake is too high, so that no one can win anymore. If you want to talk about poker becoming a simple gamble that (rake vs money won) is what you have to look at.

5) If the assumption some here are making that only good players re-enter (and re-enter several times ) is correct, that would change the player composition to a player pool with skill levels that are closer together and thus would make the rake exorbitant high relative to money that is actually won/lost. At that point re-entry becomes a problem for poker as it would change the games into a gambling game (-EV game for everyone).

All other things being equal, the re-entry or rebuy is a distinct advantage. I asked Probabilities to run a simulation a while back, and rebuying 10x yields a roughly 9:1 advantage.

There is no spewing among the good players. They poke around to see who's playing like they are on just one bullet, and then target them.

I have seen them "spew" in like a $1K rebuy to pile chips on that particular table, so one or more of them would move on with a bigger stack than anyone in the room, but that is strategy, not spew.

Someone itt started that AAvs72o spew stuff and it was taken too far. That's not how it happens.
Instead you are up against a bunch of professionals very familiar with the finer points of rebuys / reentries aiming right at you, and who you cannot knock out even if you get lucky.
You won't outsmart them by laying low and attacking when you have a hand... well... maybe one time. But after that you are in trouble.

Yeah, I'd just ask a mod for a name change if you can. Your case isn't quite as bad as being the last guy trying to sport a Charlie Chaplin mustache, but it's close.

Pretty sure it's a hitler mustache

yeah joe.. ask for a name change

You're not, but you keep getting so many replies because you use horrible logic, and everyone likes arguing against horrible logic.

In other words, it's -EV. Well done.

Playing tournaments is -EV.
Rebuying brings it closer to zero, but nothing short of cheating is a +EV strategy.

People are thinking "I can play my regular Tuesday night cash game against the local fish and make up on the lost tournament EV." That's fine.

I don't look at things that way. A tournament is a one shot deal. Do whatever you gotta do to win it and forget EV.

*Disclaimer* I have posted several times my love for Mikey.

I was at the Heads Up Championship this year..in Vegas for wife's bday..happen to notice it worked out for me to watch it..from the first day Mike was on fire..he was really focused it was like watching the old Mike..

Fast forward to the final 16 and then 8 and I knew Mike would go deep..I said hi to him a few times..guy would always acknowledge me and was very gracious.

He wins the thing..and within 5 minutes of taking the obligatory promotional pics he was there meeting people, shaking hands..taking pics..

Mike Matusow is TRUTH.

WTF are you talking about?

If you're a winning tournament player, then it's +EV for you. If you're not, it isn't, and rebuying doesn't change that - it just multiplies your expected loss.

I'm saying tournaments are a non-winnable format in general. Nobody can make money playing only them.
A min cash is approximately double the buy-in. So, to break even you gotta min-cash (or better) in half of all the tournaments you enter. Ignores taxes, travel, etc..
Does anyone come close to that?

Sure, if you can sell action, you can stay on the circuit forever, and you'll cash big and maybe win here and there. But it's not your money. Without steady backing the winnings will drain away.

Last year the WSOP published all entrants and winnings. Someone (kevmath?) did a spread sheet and found the overall EV was 35% negative or something like that for the "top" 100 players (basically the best known pros) during that series.
Thread was like Jan '13 or so iirc. I tried to search it but failed. "Are tournaments profitable" or similar, in NVG.

This year the WSOP is not releasing that information for some reason..

Agreed

WSOP Results for Top Players. 27.30% ROI?

one big cash in a tourney gives you buy-ins for the tourneys where you do not cash

anyway, if you can cash in approximately 20% of the tourneys you play you likely will be up so long as the buy-ins are similar in size

tourneys are not -EV

you should actually look at all of the tourneys that you have played as just one big tourney

Thanks for linking that thread... an interesting re-read. I see it was a Fantasy list rather than top players.
It is the one I referred to but there was another ... much more earthy and much longer sometime after this one.

I search NVG "Any Date" and get just 2 threads with "profitable" and 3 with "tournaments" in the title. That can't be right.
Maybe it was in HSMMT. I'll try and find it.

Can anyone cash in 20% of their attempts? If so, just a 10%-of-field min-cash won't cover the losses of the other 4 buy-ins.
That cash has to be much closer to the top. I'm gonna estimate you gotta finish in the top 3% of the field.

Agree that what you gotta do is bink a huge score. That will fund you for a while. But a bink is pure luck and its influence absolutely dwarfs a player's decision making. You could play everything -EV and luck will easily win it for you.

There's no great disadvantage in playing one bullet in a rebuy tournament with 1000 entries as opposed to playing in a freezeout with 1000 players. The only difference is that you're going to be up against big stacks early in the rebuy which can be either an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the structure.

Yes the 100 players who reloaded 10 times in the first tournament have a better chance of going deeper than you but you are at no great disadvantage in either regardless of what playing style these metrics generate.

You're on equal footing in both against the overall playing field though yes the stack sizes early in the rebuy tournament change the dynamic of the tournament

Mike has a good point
its not just re entries (which are NOT rebuys), its the fact that you don't have to lose all your chips to re enter..
.
, there is a chance that you could slowly take chips off over 1 or more re entries and slowly add them to your stack later.

there must be some way to prevent this (maybe, different chips for each day as Mike said , but that still wouldn't stop it for multiple entries on the same day...)
IDK ???

Can you estimate whatever disadvantage does exist?

We are of equal skill. You and I do a last-longer for $100. I am allowed to rebuy once. You are not allowed.
What would be fair odds on that bet?

I think you need to realize that you are just fundamentally wrong about everything. I'm a guy who fires one maybe two bullets and I love rebuys. You need to watch the Knish speech where he talks about playing for money. Because unless you play for the thrill of victory you really shouldn't care that much about anyone firing 10 bullets. You don't seem to realize when that guy buys in the 10th time that he starts with a normal starting stack but now has to final table in order to break even. Doesn't sound like an advantage to me.

Um... no.

Sure, your results in ONE tournament are mostly luck. But you get SOME convergence relatively quickly (although it takes forever to approach a "true" ROI). That's why stakehorses can make a good living. 15 top-notch horses playing 15 tournaments each are very likely to turn a net profit.

Knish hunts for soft cash games where he has an edge, so he can pay the rent. No way would he recommend playing a tournament. He's not a dreamer.

If results in this tournament are mostly luck, the results in that tournament are the same. And that one. And the next one... No matter how many times you roll a die, it will always have 6 sides, never fewer.

If a particular tournament structure offers an advantage, we would be dumb to pass it up. Rebuying is such an offer since some players cannot afford to take advantage of it.
This extra cost is forced on us (if we want to be competitive).

My favorite venue's latest schedule is all re-entries. They are doing this because the economy is bad and turnouts have been poor. There's not much more to say about it.

So you claim that buying into a tournament once is -EV, but doing so multiple times is suddenly +EV? LOL.