ITT: players argue that making a series of -EV plays somehow sums up to be +EV. We've come a long way as gamblers!

But Daniel knows that he has a luck edge and so can make a series of -ev plays that will eventually result in a big stack which is +ev

After all tournaments are just a mechanism to move money from those who run bad to those who run goood. As a run goooder, it therefore makes perfect sense for Daniel to give himself the best chance to catch some run goood.

Daniel gets a better shot at the title, everyone else gets the equity from him spewing early on. Win-win for everyone.

What a great title.

Doesn't tripling your stack not triple your EV, while buying 3x requires you need to triple your EV to breakeven? Furthermore how is buying into the same tourney 3 times different from buying into 3 separate tournaments? For it to be different that would mean you dumping your last 2 buyins on the same tournament affects your chances of going deep with your next buyin.

No not at all.

It's the one most amateurs play since it's the World Series of Poker Main Event. It's the big daddy and is shown on ESPN so even there friends who know nothing of poker still know of the WSOP ME . I know from experience on this lol

So even if it was unlimited rebuy's as long it was shown on ESPN it would still be the one everyone would want to play.

I never said anything about tripling your EV, I just illustrated what guys like DNegs are trying to do. They will buy-in as many times until they "run good" (i.e. - win ~3 all-ins in a row, amass a huge stack). I think it does increase their Expected Result if they get a huge stack, an obvious statement of course.

I hope his plugs fall out

No you are absolutely right but and anyone who claims that this is a +ev strategy is ******ed. I don't even need to calculate it but simply show an extreme example.

Let's say there's 500 entrants but you decide to buy in for a mirrion times (consider it infinite), You'll have a 99%+ chance of finishing 1st but for the fun of it let's just say you win 1st prize every single time. Let's also assume that 1st doesn't pay 100% of the prize pool but rather something along the lines of 20%. You have now invested 1 million buy ins to win 200k thus having an ROI of -80%.

Thought the standard now was to play any rebut as a cubed no?

This doesn't quite work because you might get lucky and run it up on your first buy in.

When you buy in once and play like a maniac, you're not giving up your full buy-in, just a certain amount of EV. A smart LAG strategy is probably not giving up all that much, particularly if other people in the tournament are doing the same thing.

Let's say you have a $EV of $200 /100 hands when playing with 100BB stacks and by adopting a maniacal strategy in the rebuy period you can expect to see an average of 500 hands with a deep stack later in the tourney. If your maniacal play costs you less than $1000 EV on average, then it is a good strategy. I'm just pulling these numbers out of my hat obviously, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility that something like this could be the case.

Of course your extreme example is correct.

And of course if you spend $50k (5 buyins) instead of just $10K (1 buyin) you will have to do better than min-cash to even break-even.

But Daniel probably feels that if it takes spending $50K to accumulate an early monster-sized stack, it will give him an edge to have a greater chance at Final Table money.

You might get lucky but since you're spewing to get up to a certain amount of chips you'll lose money doing so. I'm just saying that if you could buy extra chips for a linear increase of money, so the purest form of "buying a stack", you'll lose money in the tournament because of that.

If it's true that he has been jamming in 50bb+ without looking at his cards then you can expect him to lose a hell of a lot more than $1000 out of a $10k buy in in terms of real money equity.

Of course and that's why he is probably doing that. He himself must know that he is paying money just for a bigger chance to win a title and with that some real money implications for him as a brand. Anyone screaming that he is gaining an edge by doing so should pile together their money and do the very same thing. Oh wait they're not going to do that because they don't hate money and are just whining.

Well, yea, there are very few people that could pump $50K into a single tournament, heck there aren't that many people, really, that can dump $10K into a single tournament without backing arrangements or selling pieces (unless they're playing way above their roll assuming you should have a BR of 100 tournament buyins).

Plus, as you know even if you do accumulate a large stack early, that's no guarantee of making big money or even cashing for that matter.

Only thing I would say is that people that use this strategy usually aren't just "blind shoving" like Daniel was reportedly doing. Usually people playing this way will simply happily flip 100bb stacks with any pair or ~2 broadway cards, and hope they are actually flipping and then hope to win the flip, and repeat that a few times. But not really just "blind shoving" any two, that's a little extreme.

Yeah, I mean I was just making the numbers up. What I was getting at is that it's not beyond the realm of possibility that adopting a slightly -EV high variance strategy during the rebuy period could be +EV over the tournament as a whole.

I don't think anyone is seriously claiming that going all-in blind is a +EV strategy. If someone did claim that, I agree it's ******ed.

Shame on 2p2 for allowing this continued bashing of Bellagio and not even letting the casino defend itself or explain its actions.


Okay, but seriously...

Aaah, although I initially agreed with the OP, I see it now. Thanks. And now I'd like to hear Allen's rebuttal to your post.

It's not inconsistent because Daniel was focusing specifically on the likelihood of win a bracelet when he wrote that. There are those for whom the primary goal is to win the bracelet (e.g. those with bracelet bets, or who are climbing the all-time bracelets leaderboard), and the mass buy-ins do boost their chances, as lkasigh mentioned above. Such players aren't worried about their EV so much as they are on winning the jewelry, and will pay more to achieve that end.

Of course, it was still an odd post on Daniel's part, as he was the biggest practitioner of the buy-in/binge/bet/bracelet plan. So he was effectively saying, "I do not want to allow something that I've been doing for years, dammit!"

However, in this Bellagio event, the WPT bracelets do not have that prestige — and yes, there are people for whom the WSOP bracelet has prestige — so players focus on EV/winning money, again as lkasigh detailed.

BTW this is the bigger problem with Bellagio tourneys.

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2013/1...ents-16858.htm

I think the root of this comes back to the evolution on the game. Matt Savage created these events to boost prize pools, specifically to get a 1Mil pool with a $125 buy in, and he did it.

These events are not going away, the traditional freeze out is gone outside of a few select events. Pros like chainsaw will have to adjust or die.

And all the hate on the 'saw is unwarranted. I like reading his views and he has good insight. If you don't like his threads, don't open em.

post of the year. Right behind "where will airport scamming be in 5 years?" + opening-text

Allen is complaining because not everyone who is planning on reentering is going to cannon off his first bullet like Negreanu and its obviously horrible for everyone below the premiere regs to have to cope with 3x Dan Smiths, just because he ran KK into AA etc. The top regs take a huge chunk of the prizepool, so when these guys can come back in, it sucks for everyone but them in terms of ev. Some recs probably enjoy the challenge and wouldn't particularly care.

Everyone who understands basic icm should understand Negreanu is burning ev here in terms of this one tournament and this prizepool but for all we know Stars offer him a triple your money bonus if he wins so its actually fine. Or maybe his recent blog saying he had more money than he can spend has actually become a challenge to him, one that he should be able to achieve unlike his 5knl tweet.

So when my father (recreational player) first told me about the smallstakes tournament he was in with people shoving 100 BBs atc and rebuying, I made similar arguments to many in this thread, that surely this was good for him. The two points that made me change my mind were

1) that while he could have got the better of them he would probably have to rebuy several times himself, so he would be playing a bigger investment tournament than the one he signed up for.

2) in terms of his liferoll the +ev in the situation was pretty marginal for him. He chose to spend one his few free days playing a game of skill not because of the ev but for the opportunity to exercise skill and judgement playing poker. Constantly mechanically calling off with aces, kings and pairs doesn't cut it as an experience.

Look after recreational players and the game will look after you.

Chainsaw has posted many threads in his time on 2plus2 and for the most part they stand on merit.

His threads draw many posts and real discussion about important topics. I would like to bold face real discussion and important topics.

I defiantly would not want to see his future threads trivialized into a "Chainsaw-gripe containment thread"

This is a News Views and Gossip forum.

You definitely are defiant in your opinions.

Let me get this straight a professional player wants to stop someone going all in blind constantly in a tournament - more than likely throwing tens of thousands of dollars into the prizepool/spraying chips around his table?