PPT into Day 2

The PPT Championship got underway yesterday, with 160 people contending for the 1.6m prize pool. I busted, barb busted, skippy busted as did a number of our great friends. However, we do have some players in the game. Traded pieces with Marty Shakes, Mikey Rebuy, Aris, and Ace, who finished yesterday in the top 30. GL on Day 2 guys.

Special mention. Heading into day 2, Neil, Mischa and Bryan are among the contenders.

The thing kicks off at 5pm. I'll be there to see them play down to the final table.

And a special note. PAGCOR personnel, led by our good friend Emi Mungcal, did a rockin' job of running a smooth operation. Great tourney direction guys.

N.

PPT Tourney tomorrow

I've got a good friend looking for a seat to tomorrow's PPT tourney. If anybody wants to unload one, kindly comment here or text me at 0917 628 1255 thx.

More than your fair share

I love it when other peoples' discussions feed content directly into this blog. You see, I'm not an overly creative or inspired guy (those of you who've played poker with me know this); coming up with topics to write about can be a real chore at times. I'm shocked I've reached a year.

Recently, a flamewar erupted on Nutsboy's blog. It all started innocently enough when Nutsboy posted an article titled "The National Playing Style of the Philippines", in which he ripped into the seemingly large number people who claim to play a Tight Aggressive Style (TAG) of poker while not necessarily knowing what that term really means. Well, a couple people got into it - one advocating a (properly understood and executed) TAG style and one arguing that TAGs are easily read and thus easily liberated of their money.

A tighter player is often defined as a person who places a premium on mathematically strong starting hands (I'm talking about texas holdem here, so any math, etc. i may throw in will be texas holdem-specific). So if we can label a person tight, we know that if they're in the pot, we're probably dealing with a very small range of hands - perhaps 20-30 out of the 169 potential starting hands. These people place a premium on mathematical edges; meaning that in a purely theoretical sense, their holdings will have a theoretical adantage (better than 50%) over their opponents' potential holdings (again a range). This is a critical concept not only in poker theory, but in gambling theory in general.

Looser (Loose Aggressives, or LAGs) players are understood to be more liberal in their starting hand selection, relying more on variables like position, table texture and player reading ability to make their profits. Looser players who are knowledgeable and experienced tend to be fantastic post-flop players and get paid off by action when hold'em's very pronounced short term luck factor falls on their side. LAGs tend to be aggressors; you'll find them opening and leading out in pots more often than other players on the tighter end of the spectrum.

In my humble opinion, there is no "better" or "worse" style between the two - the short term favors the LAG over the TAG, as the LAG will naturally pick up more than his/her fair share of pots on hand-by-hand basis. The TAG, whose sensibilities tend to favor unambiguous situations, will generally play fewer pots and thus win his or her fair share, perhaps slightly more, over a longer stretch of time.

It's almost a waste of time to argue about which style is "better" - the evidence shows that either can pay off in spades. In the world of pro poker, both styles are well represented: On the loose side, one can mention Hansen, Negreanu and Ungar, undoubtedly geniuses and very successful. On the tight side, Lederer, Harrington, Chip Reese come to mind. These guys are no slouches either.

Oh, when I say "fair share", I mean the number of times the pure math states you ought to win, based on the premise that over lifetimes, everybody will eventually be dealt the same cards and face the same situations.

On a slightly different note, it's real tough and dangerous to pigeonhole a person into this style or that. Yes, we may correctly (and profitably) characterize a player within a session based on behaviors, actions, showdowns - in short, on the spot evidence. But we can run into problems when we take that session's info and import it wholesale into a new session - day, game type, stakes, etc.

This leads us to the notion of "switching gears", which was also mentioned in the Nutsboy thread. This is a key concept, and to me it's a skill that allows us to both win more than our fair share and to stymie the efforts of others to do the same. It's a tool in a zero-sum environment. But we often fail to think about this concept beyond the confines of a single game, session, or tournament. We would all do well to think about how we can switch gears both in the micro sense (in-game) and in the macro sense (long-term).

In the end, TAG or LAG, or whatever flavor you wanna throw into the mix, requires creativity and attention to the little things that win you more than your fair share while at the same time denying others the opportunity to grab more than their fair share.

New look...

This blog is now just about a year old. 1st post April 24, 2005. This one makes post number 152. So in recognition of this auspicious birthday, I decided to dress it up for the party and switch blogger templates.

Just kidding.

The reason for the template change is the thing wouldn't load and on further investigation I found that the template was missing huge chunks of code. The only way I could get it readable again was to switch templates. I thought GMA had laid proclamation 1017 on my blog. But it must've been a drunken editing session gone badly awry.

Anyhoo, I lost things like my links, etc. Had to rebuild them. I know I missed a bunch...if I missed yours, and you wanna get relinked, comment here. If I never had you linked, and wanna get linked, comment here. If you want me to link to someone you're linked to, comment here. Anyway, just comment.

Happy bday, blog.

Oh, and some news, our good buddy and intrepid poker traveler, Dirty Ice Cream, was in touch during his adventure at the Crown Casino in Melbourne. He played a NLHE tourney in a field of 408. AUD$200 buy-in. He was unfortunately busted in level three by a donk who called his TT raise with 98...you got it, the betting got heavy on a raggedy board (containing a 9), Neil decided he'd make a point with a jam, and eyore caught a 9 on the river to make his trips.

I'm sure Neil made it all back and then some in the side games.

CF Angeles Shootout

Casino Filipino Angeles is hosting a shootout tourney this Saturday, April 22. If you feel like some shootout action, pop on by!

Philippine Poker Championship Payout Schedule

The Philippine Poker Championship recently posted its Prize Payout Schedule. A few people have begun talking about this. On the manilapoker yahoo group, a debate has sprung up on its merits as a payout schedule - and beyond. I decided to throw my .02 cents in...here's a copy of what I posted. Let me know what you think.
_______
A humble submission on how the payout schedule may be altered to
better fit industry standards for payouts. I am also submitting this
document for the consideration of the Poker Club. I know at least
the Poker Club Secretariat reads this board, but I am also emailing
this to them.

Caveat: I don't speak as an insider, merely as an interested
observer (who is still trying to decide whether or not to play the
tourney).

Let's start with the basis of the debate on whether the current
published payout structure is "good" or "bad". As far as I know,
the PPT kicked of the event with a promise of a P1 million prize for
the 1st place finisher, and then ultimately guaranteed a total prize
pool of 1.6 million for the field. 600K then would be paid to final
9 players after the champ.

This clearly skews the whole pool (1.6m) badly vis-à-vis standard
payout schedules for the poker world.

But it was a great marketing message (they are after all selling a
21K seat, which is steep for most local players' tourney bankrolls).

What I would have done is not guarantee the 1m to the champion. I
would have used my standard (and admittedly flat) payout schedule to
disburse this way (10 ways paid). By the way, if they do seat
between 80 and 100 players, 10 players is a good portion of the
field to be paid.

Percentages:

30,20,12,10,8,6,5,4,3,2

Money:

480000
320000
192000
160000
128000
96000
80000
64000
48000
32000

1,600,000


But that's just to illustrate how I'd do it. The reality is the PPT
is faced with how to distribute 600K into 9 places in a reasonable
way. We now have to treat this as a tourney in which 9 ways are paid
with a total prize pool of 600K. That's tough for the players,
because the absolute value of their buy-in vis-à-vis the pot has
decreased to 7500 from 21K (assuming 80 players, because 600,000/80
= 7500.00). A reverse overlay, if you will.

Left to my own devices, I'd apply my nine ways paid schedule to the
600K.

Percentages:

32,21,15,10,8,5,4,3,2

Money:

192000
126000
90000
60000
48000
30000
24000
18000
12000

600,000

This makes a difference in the way people are rewarded, and I
believe more in keeping with the way players are used to being paid.
Remember we treat the 1st place winner as a real lucky person in
this field and the beneficiary of what I'm calling the reverse
overlay effect of this tourney. Everybody else makes money, even the
bottom 2 places, who are paid less than 21K. Remember that because
of the skew towards first, we have two prize pools (1m and 600K).
the net effect is that everybody but the 1st placer theoretically
pays 21K for a P7500.00 seat. Everybody but the eventual winner
should just resign themselves to that I guess.

As an aside, I know a guy who is trying to sell his seat (won in a
satellite) for 18K. Based on the above, I would pay no more than
P7500.00 for it, because in my mind that is its real value.

Satellite Effect

But, because the vast bulk of this field will have entered via
satellite tourneys, their net cost would actually be lower than our
theoretical P7500 mark. Around P3500 would be the average actual
cost of a tourney seat. So paying 10th and 9th place less than 21K
will likely still be profitable.

I believe that under this model, each person is rewarded
appropriately past the bubble, and the incremental jumps in money by
place make it worth playing up the ladder.

This model can be tweaked some more.

Appreciate any thoughts.

Misc...

Apologies out of the way...

I've been pretty negligent on the old posting side lately. This is likely due to my "benchwarmer" status in poker these days - taking a bit of a breather to collect myself after a sustained downswing since Jan 1. (about 2BB/100 hands on the negative side playing 10/20 and 3/6 Limit online). I won't tell ya what the absolute hit is, but it ain't pretty. Things have turned around, but I'm not putting in the hours.

PPT

The Philippine Poker Tour has published its payout schedule on its website. All I can really say is...huh?

Bodog.com 6-handed SNG

Barb's started playing a cool little thing at Bodog.com. They're shorthanded SNGs (6-max), paying 2 places at 65%/35%. A great bet mathematically - you now only have to beat out 4 players rather than 7 or 6 (for 9-handed SNGs) to money. Stakes from 12.00+1 all the way to 120+10...Barb's crushing them with a 80% ITM rate. Try it...

Gear

Online play is where poker meets geek tech. Just bought a new PC for the house. Now saving up for a 21" LCD for some non-flickering multi-tabling action.

Till the next time...

PPT Update

Ok, got to talk to Cindy late last week regarding my questions about the upcoming Philippine Poker Championship being sponsored by the Poker Club of the Philippines at the end of this month. For those of you who don't know what those questions were, see the post below.

I asked for the tourney structure, and as much as she wanted to help me, she couldn't say...it was at that time either unreleased to the public or was not yet finalized. She said she'd ask her bosses and get back to me, but I haven't heard as of yet.

Regarding payouts, my good friend Eric got the skoop. The prize pool will cap at 1.6mm, with 1 million going to the champ. The 600K will be distributed from 2nd to 10th place. They are expecting 80-100 seats.

I have no info on who the tourney director/s will be.

I hope I get this info soon...

Peace