How much of a 'gambler' are you?- Hypothetical Question

jtsuited

Ok apologies in advance if there is a glaringly obvious answer to this. But i certainly can't figure out what i'd do.

So here's the situation. You enter a cardroom (any cardroom will do) with the intention of using the 300 euro in your pocket to play the 300 euro buyin tourney.

You arrive early (for whatever reason), and the 'blind-omaha' one hand satellites are starting. Obviously you have no interest as you have the buyin safely in your pocket.
But Obviously the chances of winning one of these crapshoots is one in ten.
You know it's essentially a ten way coinflip competition, but you start thinking, well i only have to win before satellite no. 10 to save yourself money.

Another relevant piece of information is that you have no other money with you for whatever reason.
However The 300 is not scared money!

I guess the question is :

Would you try your 'luck' trying to win one of these sattellites before the tenth one? After all, it's 300 of a tournament buyin (which you'll probably have to get lucky [to some degree] in the tourney in order to make any money).

Or would you sensibly realise that you could just as easily get the wrong end of the variance stick and end up going broke? Ten 'spins of the wheel' is not enough with these types of probabilities.

I was discussing this with my significant other (who's mad into her maths- she consistently beats me at poker too!!) and we came to the conclusion that all 'rationale' aside it depends more on your personality than anything else. After all, that 300 euro is being invested in a tournament that luck is going to play a significant part in anyway. You only have to win before or on blind sattellite nine to guarantee yourself some sort of return. Even if it is thirty euro!

Btw, the tournament is not some mega-stacked wsop event with two hour+ blind levels and massive stacks. Take the same structure as the fitz end of month as the type of tournament it is. I later decided if it was the former, i definitely would not play the sattellites (less luck in actual tourney etc.)

Answers on a postcard to....

5starpool

Usually I go down with enough to play a 1 hander and pay in if i lose (unlikely I know). In the above situation I would just pay in and not bother about the sats. If I was potentially going to play 10 sats for it I would just put it all on Red/Black and try to get free entry that way. But I never play 10 sats for an event, and I would never put 300 on red/black.

This month I just used my credit as I resolved I wasn't paying for it (other than the credit I had won of course).

jtsuited

i guess the 10 satellites combined is (almost) the equivalent if placing it on red/black. That's the conclusion i was coming to, but i think the degenerate (fun) gambler in me was screwing with my sensibility chip!

ollyk1

jtsuited wrote:

Ok apologies in advance if there is a glaringly obvious answer to this. But i certainly can't figure out what i'd do.

So here's the situation. You enter a cardroom (any cardroom will do) with the intention of using the 300 euro in your pocket to play the 300 euro buyin tourney.

You arrive early (for whatever reason), and the 'blind-omaha' one hand satellites are starting. Obviously you have no interest as you have the buyin safely in your pocket.
But Obviously the chances of winning one of these crapshoots is one in ten.
You know it's essentially a ten way coinflip competition, but you start thinking, well i only have to win before satellite no. 10 to save yourself money.

Another relevant piece of information is that you have no other money with you for whatever reason.
However The 300 is not scared money!

I guess the question is :

Would you try your 'luck' trying to win one of these sattellites before the tenth one? After all, it's 300 of a tournament buyin (which you'll probably have to get lucky [to some degree] in the tourney in order to make any money).

Or would you sensibly realise that you could just as easily get the wrong end of the variance stick and end up going broke? Ten 'spins of the wheel' is not enough with these types of probabilities.

I was discussing this with my significant other (who's mad into her maths- she consistently beats me at poker too!!) and we came to the conclusion that all 'rationale' aside it depends more on your personality than anything else. After all, that 300 euro is being invested in a tournament that luck is going to play a significant part in anyway. You only have to win before or on blind sattellite nine to guarantee yourself some sort of return. Even if it is thirty euro!

Btw, the tournament is not some mega-stacked wsop event with two hour+ blind levels and massive stacks. Take the same structure as the fitz end of month as the type of tournament it is. I later decided if it was the former, i definitely would not play the sattellites (less luck in actual tourney etc.)

Answers on a postcard to....

The way you have descibed this Jeff it doesn't matter because there is no rake being taken in the blind omaha game. So in the long run you are paying the same amount by either route.

In reality Dom pays extra to try and "win" his ticket via the blind omaha route for the EOM game. In the long run he pays €300 for a ticket worth €270.

So then this question is do I want to gamble and try to get to play on the cheap in this hypotethical example in the short run. Personally I won't becasue if the €300 isn't scared money then by implication I'll be playing this game regularly as its within my BR (I just don't have all my BR in my pocket is my understanding of the example given) and I therefore must believe I have an edge in the poker game if I'm going to play it regularly.

So why would I jeopardise that edge (however small I believe it to be) by risking my tournament life on coin flips where I have absolutely no edge?

In other words if I believe I am a better then average player and so my tournament entry is worth €350 in my hands versus the average of €300 I am that much closer to realising my edge if I buyin direct. The tournament long run is long enough why should I add to the variance on average only playing every second event under this coinflip strategy??

jtsuited

ollyk1 wrote:

The way you have descibed this Jeff it doesn't matter because there is no rake being taken in the blind omaha game. So in the long run you are paying the same amount by either route.

You see that's the thing, it adds up the same either way (or so i think). I'm more interested to see how much of a variable actual personality is in this situation.
It's like a fork in the road type of question, except for both the roads lead to the same place. Do you a) pay the buyin directly
or b) decide that sure you may as well pass the time in a bit of a rare gamble for fun, and sure it's the equivalent of buying directly in anyway (over time).

I'm more interested in seeing the replies people post than anything else. Just out of curiousity as to what type of people they are: the gambling sometimes just for the fun of it (when you're getting neither the worst or best of it) or the disciplined 'i find no fun in coinflips'.

Personally i would be definitely the latter, but i'd probably enjoy the game more if i was the former!!!

Poker & Pints

I would fire two bullets at the sats and see if I got in cheap...if not I get in th cash game. I don't get overly worried about not playing the big tourney.....theres always another right down the road.

Hectorjelly

If you make a bet with expectation p%, then your profit will tend towards np where n is the number of bets you make. The more you make the closer it will be to the true figure. So in theory any number of 0 expectation bets you make will have no effect on your expectation at the end of any given period, however that assumes that you are playing with an unlimited bankroll. In the case described in the OP you dont have an unlimited bankroll (note that in most cases a sufficvent bankroll is the same as an umlimited one). For simplicites sake lets say this guy is above average poker player, and has ROI of 150% in the main event.

So if there are 10 10k events in the year, the guy who plays all 10 without ever playing the 1 hand stts will end up with 150% of whatever he has wagered. If he wagers 10k he will end up with 15k profit

The player who plays the single handed stts is going to miss a certain % of tournaments. For him to miss he has to not win 9 in a row. The chance of this is (1-1/9)^9. That equates to 35%. So 35% of the time he misses the tournament. So he will end up with 150% of 65% of 10k, which is 9750.00
profit. However this isnt the total story, as when he does get in he has gotten in cheap. Assuming he has gotten in its actually quite trivial to work out how much he has paid to enter.

1/9 of the time he gets in on his first go. He makes an extra 889 profit (it cost him 111 to enter
8/9 * 1/9 he gets in on the 2nd go. He makes an extra 778 profit.
8/9 * 8/9 * 1/9 He gets in on the 3rd go. He makes an extra 667 profit.
As you can see this is about to get messy so ive done the rest in a spreadsheet

%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%	%overall	how much does he make			Avg expectation, based on playing 10 10k events. 	
0.11										0.11	889.00			98.78	987.78
0.89	0.11									0.10	778.00			76.07	760.71
0.89	0.89	0.11								0.09	667.00			57.97	579.71
0.89	0.89	0.89	0.11							0.08	556.00			42.95	429.55
0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.11						0.07	445.00			30.56	305.59
0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.11					0.06	334.00			20.39	203.88
0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.11				0.05	223.00			12.10	121.00
0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.11			0.05	112.00			5.40	54.02
0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.89	0.11		0.04	1.00	(rounding error)		0.04	0.43
	<<< this is the total % of the time in which he gets in cheap (or for a1 buyin). >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>									0.65				344.27	

														total saved	3442.67

so his total profit for the year is 9750 + 3442, which is 13192. Which is considerable less than the 15k the other punter makes.

Now the quick amongs you will have realised that this is because playing the 1 handed stt means that sometimes the player doesnt get to gamble where he has positive expectation. Basically it makes no difference if he plays the 1 handed stts or not given a sufficent BR, but since thiis is not the case he can only cost himself money. Personality has nothing to do with this, logic and maths do! Btw its interesting to note thata bad player is far better off playing the 1 handed stts.

cardshark202

I would get someone to set up a €300 hand of blind omaha so I could win my entry fee for the next 9 months.

jtsuited

yes reggie..
yes you would.