Quote:
Originally Posted by answer20
It's always fun to discuss these spots .. The main issue with the WSOP ME spot is that you really don't win anything and it could be your only chance to play the ME. The dynamics of the spot beyond the math is the interesting part here for me.
I've always said, and would love to be in this spot and be forced to decide, that if I ever had 180K or more chip stack from a Day 1 WSOP ME that I wouldn't even show up for Day 2 .. and I would still be well above average at day's end. The percentage of Day 1 top 'xx' stacks that don't cash is very high. GL
You nailed it. Playing aces in almost any situation is the right play over time. But most people will never get the chance to play the Main Event even twice. There is no long-term for smoothing out variance in Main Events.
There is an even more important thing to consider. It's an economics term called "marginal utility", or to put it another way for this example, life changing money.
In
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith explained marginal utility something like this:
If you are starving and someone gives you a piece of bread, that bread means everything to you. A second piece would mean almost as much, but if the bread keeps coming you eventually get to the point where one more piece of bread isn't very important.
So, let's take Smith's example and change "a piece of bread" to "life changing money" or "putting my kids through college" or "paying for my son's multiple surgeries" or "paying all the money that I owe the IRS."
In you are in a crisis situation and sitting at the final table*, you're happy to watch everyone else at the table play that hand, moving you up several pay jumps and instantly solving major problems like the above.
You don't need to win the thing. All you have to do is move up a couple pay spots and you don't have to worry about paying for your kid's surgeries. Why take the risk to play the hand?
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*I'm assuming that this player got in on a satellite so paying the entry free wasn't an issue.