If You Never Go All In, You Cannot Lose

“Tournaments are like plus-EV lottery tickets... or in some cases, minus-EV lottery tickets.”

That was an idea tossed out by Phil Laak this week while helping with the commentary on the WSOP Europe live stream. Kind of an interesting observation, I thought, about tournament poker that highlighted how much luck is involved in winning a tourney while also noting that some players can via their skills and tourney know-how lessen that chance element -- or, with a lack of such know-how, increase it.

During some of the breaks this week on the WSOPE stream they’ve been showing clips from last year’s WSOPE Main Event final table won by Phil Hellmuth. Saw the finale again a little earlier today, including Hellmuth’s coming over to the rail after winning and saying something about having been all in and at risk only a single time throughout the entire tourney.

We take him at his word, I suppose, but in truth I think that is one statistic Hellmuth can be counted on to keep track of as he plays -- namely, the number of times he’s been all in and at risk in a tournament. He’s famously pronounced in the past with pride his ability to avoid such spots in tourneys. Of course it is an inarguable truism that if you never go all in versus a player with more chips, you cannot possibly be eliminated. (Easier said than done.)

Was kind of setting those two ideas beside each other today while watching what has turned out to be a long heads-up battle between Fabrice Soulier and Adrian Mateos, thinking about how that strategy of avoiding all-ins -- when employed in conjunction with a lot of other poker skills, of course -- can work to improve ones chances in the tourney “lottery.”

Especially in a relatively small field tourney like the WSOPE Main Event usually is -- Hellmuth topped a field of 420 last year; there were 375 entered this time -- the chances of making one’s way all of the way through it without being at risk more than once is better than is the case, say, in the WSOP Main Event where I have to imagine all nine of those who made this year’s final table were at risk somewhere along the way, perhaps more than once. Would be interesting to sort that out regarding this year’s November Nine (if possible).

In any event, it’s interesting to think how playing a tournament is on one level a willing acceptance of risk (especially from the perspective of a cash game player), a primary strategy of the tournament itself is to avoid risk.

Have a good weekend all. And whatever you do, manage your risk appropriately.

Big Fun with The Big Game

Have been very much enjoying the live stream and commentary of PartyPoker’s Big Game VI from Vienna, Austria over the last couple of days. Looks like they have about four or five more hours left to go in what has become a more-than-48-hour cash game.

I’ve been watching the feed via the PokerNews page, where one can also follow and participate in moderated chat over to the right. The picture and sound have been clear and without any glitches whatsoever. Commentary has been useful and entertaining, with Jesse May among those having contributed. And the chat has even been a nice add, too, thanks in part to the fact that it has been moderated with some of the PokerNews folks serving as hosts along the way.

I watched for a few hours yesterday, and have it on again today as I write. The game has been highly compelling to watch. During the hours I’ve seen, Tony G has been present throughout with lots of table talk and relatively loose play. Dan “Jungleman” Cates has been struggling, down nearly €100K at the moment. And iron man Phil Laak has of course been there, too, the only player to play the entire session.

By the time I picked up the feed yesterday, Laak was already up the most of anyone, nearly €150K ahead. The most amazing hand to watch by far came last night, sometime after midnight Vienna time, one involving Laak and Andy Moseley.

They were playing six-handed at the time. Not sure what the situation was with straddles and so on, but there was €500 in the middle to start the hand. Laak was dealt and opened with a raise to €700. Tony G called from the small blind with , then Andy Moseley reraised to €3,400 from the BB with .

The action back on Laak, he made a loosey-goosey four-bet to €10,200, forcing out Tony G. Moseley then shipped for €31,425 total and after thinking for a while Laak decided to call.

Laak didn’t turn over his hand, following a fairly common practice in cash games. You could hear him explaining to the others that those watching the live feed could already see his hand, and he thus didn’t feel obligated to show his ace-rag to the table. He also sounded a little like he was unhappy with himself about getting into such a spot.

“Look, when a guy’s melting off his money, you don’t have the right to see his hand,” Laak said with a grin. “That’s the way it is in a poker room.”

The flop came , then the turn brought the to pair Laak, who didn’t react at all to the card. When asked, Moseley said “I feel like 6 out of 10 comfortable” regarding his prospects at that point with ace-king -- without, of course, knowing that Laak had just binked his six.

Meanwhile, adding to the fun, it was at that moment Tony G offered to bet €3,000 that Laak had the best hand, with both Alec Torelli and Scott Seiver taking him up on it and taking Moseley’s hand.

The river then brought the , and all waited for Laak to signal whether he’d won or lost. But rather than turn over the winner, Laak just grimaced and mucked his cards!

The dealer pushed the pot to Moseley -- like €64K or thereabouts -- and Torelli, Seiver, and Tony G made lots of noise off to the side as a reaction to their side bets.

“What’s happened?!” asked Jesse May. “A 60,000 Euro mistake! Oh my God!” said Scott Baumstein, his commentating partner at the time. “That means officially he’s been playing the game too long!”

They went on to explain excitedly how usually in such situations if a player made a mistake by mucking a winner, he’d never know. But with the televised presentation of this game, Laak would find out -- a half-hour later, that is, when the delayed feed aired the hand and showed he’d mucked the winner.

Wild stuff, that. Kind of recalls that time Phil Ivey mucked a winning flush when they were down to three tables in the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event. Remember that?

Tuning back in today, it appears Laak recovered well enough from his mistake, having built back up to almost a €180K profit at the moment. We’ll see how well he holds up during this final stretch run. Me, too, although I’m plenty rested. Oh, and I don’t have thousands of Euros at risk.

What the Rules Say (2009 WSOP)

Was leafing through the “Tournament Rules” for the 2009 World Series of Poker yesterday. When the rules for this year first went online about a month ago, much of the attention was given to the new “Code of Player Conduct” that appears as Rule No. 30 (of the 98 rules). Also getting some reaction at the time was that Rule No. 36 that “prohibits the use of obscene or foul language in any public area of the casino at any time.” If yr interested, click here to read F-Train’s overview of the new rules.

As I was looking back over the rules, there were a few that caught my eye, so I thought I’d share.

In the section covering “Player Likeness and Image” -- the one covering stipulations regarding the wearing of logos -- there is a new rule appearing at the end of the section, one that will most likely be referred to colloquially as the “Phil Laak Rule.”

Rule No. 44 states that “Players may not cover or conceal their facial identity. Tournament officials must be able to distinguish the identity of each player at all times and may instruct players to remove any material that inhibits their identification or is a distraction to other players or tournament officials. Players may wear sunglasses and sweat shirts with hoods, but may be asked to remove them if they cannot be identified by tournament officials.”

For those who don’t remember, Laak played Day 1d of the Main Event last year dressed as an old man, having had a professional makeup artist work five-plus hours help construct for him a full prosthetic mask. Laak went the entire day undetected, and ended up with a fairly intriguing story to tell afterwards about what it was like to be thought of as just another nobody chasing a WSOP Main Event dream. Kind of embarrassed tourney officials, too, I think, not to mention those of us who were reporting on the ME. I did think, however, that gsqwared did a nifty job recapping the stunt at the end of the day on the PokerNews live blog, in a post titled “The Amazing Phil Laak.”

A couple of other rules, neither of them new for 2009, also caught my attention. Both appear in the section regarding “Poker Rules” (i.e., actual play).

Rule No. 72 spells out how “In limit events there will be a maximum of one bet and four raises, even if there are only two players remaining in the hand.” That five-bet cap is similar to what one finds in a lot of live games, but online players may be more familiar with a four-bet cap (a bet and three raises). I didn’t cover too many limit events last summer, and in fact cannot remember ever reporting a hand that actually went five bets. The latter half of that sentence refers to the fact that some poker rooms allow players to continue raising beyond the cap if they are heads up, something that doesn’t happen in WSOP events -- with one possible exception, that is.

The rest of Rule No. 72 reads as follows: “Once the Tournament becomes heads-up, this rule does not apply. There may be unlimited raises at the heads-up level.” Would be interesting to see a hand go down at the end of a limit event this way, although it would take a mighty unique scenario for it actually to occur.

Finally, there’s another rule in here that is not new, but I think might get some extra attention this summer, the “Approved Electronic Device Rule” (Rule No. 88). Reads the same as last year, although officials have put in bold one sentence in particular that wasn’t in bold last year.

Here’s how that rule reads: “Players are allowed to use as approved electronic devices iPods, MP3 and other music players or noise-reduction headsets during Tournament play until they have reached the money in any Tournament, so long as the approved electronic devices can not [sic] access the internet, send or receive SMS texts and are not equipped with any type of communication device. Therefore, iPhones, iTouch, Treos, Blackberrys, and other similar devices will not be allowed at any time. Once players are in the money in any Tournament, all approved electronic devices must be removed. An announcement will be made to players once they have reached the money to remove all such electronic devices. Failure to do so will results in a penalty up to and including disqualification, in accordance with Rule 53.”

Rule No. 53 is the one spelling out the various penalties tourney officials can assess, including verbal warnings, one-hand penalties, one-round penalties (on up to four-round penalties), and disqualification. That’s the rule that also notes how the WSOP will be keeping a log of all penalties throughout the series so as to be able to impose harsher penalties to repeat offenders.

This rule stood out for me because of all the recent buzz about Twitter, with some even suggesting how players sending “Tweets” about their chip counts could somehow challenge (or at least affect) conventional tournament reporting. But reading the rule, it sounds like there really shouldn’t be any logging onto Twitter by the players during play, except perhaps on breaks.

As with the no-profanity rule, I have to wonder how strictly this rule is going to be enforced, especially if a lot of players start Twittering away from the start. If I remember correctly, there were some attempts to stop players from texting at the tables early on, but I think they basically gave up trying to stop ’em after a certain point.

We’ll see if tourney officials take a different approach to the enforcement of the “Approved Electronic Device Rule” this time around. If they do, I think they should probably anticipate a lot of challenges to the no-profanity rule as well.

2008 WSOP, Day 38: Living the Dream

Woke up this morning and it took me at least ten minutes to realize I was off today. Was just laying there, trying (with considerable difficulty) to calculate precisely how much longer I had available to me for snoozing before I absolutely had to get out of bed and get going. It wouldn’t add up.

Finally I realized why. I’m not working. No one is. The World Series of Poker takes its first day off since it began on May 30, giving everyone a chance to regroup before we get back to it with Tuesday’s Day 2a. Gonna be a lot to deal with when we come back. Unlike was the case on the Day Ones, we will know everyone going in on the Day Twos, and so will potentially have a ton to cover as we move forward.

I’ve worked the last five days in a row, the longest streak of the Series for me. The last of the Day Ones went fairly smoothly. Over 2,400 runners came out for this one, pushing the overall total past 2007’s and up to 6,844. A few more than expected, I think. I’d spoken with Nolan Dalla, WSOP Media Director, during the dinner break on Day 1c, and he’d thought then it would be a tight race versus last year’s 6,358. So I’m sure the WSOP brass are all happy how things turned out registration-wise.

It was also announced yesterday how the total prize pool exceeded $64 million and how the winner would be taking home something in the neighborhood of $9.1 million. Of course, the winner should be getting more than that as they’re putting the moneys in an interest-bearing account between now and November. (I would think the WSOP would do a little math and spin that prize number upwards a bit right now.)

I was in the Brasilia room this time, where I was responsible for reporting on the back half of the room, about 30-some tables. We had some name pros in our section, including Layne Flack and Antonio Esfandiari who drew seats right next to one another. Those two provided a lot of color, including a renewal of the “how best to kill a bear” debate Flack had begun in an earlier tourney (and which I had reported on then, too, both at PokerNews and here). Flack never did seem to be able to build too much of a stack, and late in the day, after he was moved from our section, he busted. Esfandiari, on the other hand, added to his stack at every level. He ended up near 100,000 by day’s end.

Tom Schneider was in my section as well, and I got to talk to him briefly and watch a few hands. I wrote up one I saw, kind of a minor one from early on that made it to showdown. Then I ended up reporting on two more of his hands that my reporters brought me, neither of which went well for Tom. In both cases he’d gotten his money in good, then his opponent hit a draw to take the hand. The first depleted his stack and the other knocked him out.

Had Shane “Shaniac” Schleger and Joe Pelton in my section, too. After the first 2 p.m. break, Schleger had rushed back in just in time for the first hand dealt, and told the table about Phil Hellmuth’s ridiculous arrival at the Rio dressed as General Patton. Trapped in the Brasilia as I was, I hadn’t seen any of that, so I was as interested as the table was in hearing Schleger explain how the vehicles and whatnot had the “US Army” logo changed to read “UB Army.” “Kind of clever, actually” said Schleger, “but must have cost a lot.” Then, after pausing a beat, he added “I wonder if they had enough left after paying people back for the super-users?” (Good question.)

Schleger had Joe Pelton two seats to his left, and he eventually busted Pelton when he flopped a nut flush. Schleger appeared to be holding steady throughout the day, and when he finally was moved he still had 33,000. But it looks like he didn’t make it through the end of the day, either.

Also covered Allen Cunningham, whom I witnessed (and reported on) dealing with some drunk railbirds very graciously. Cunningham is one cool cat. He made it through Day 1 with about 50,000.

I stayed on after the dinner break yesterday even though I wasn’t scheduled to stay, mainly because I wanted to be there to help the others cover the massive field. Most of our tables ended up breaking by the end of the night, so Matt (my reporter) and I were helping out here and there to try and get chip counts and other occasional hands. So kind of a low stress day for me, overall.

Being in the Brasilia, I missed the whole Phil Laak spectacle over in the Amazon room, too. Although it sounds like everyone did. If you haven’t heard, Laak apparently played yesterday wearing some sort of latex mask and fake mustache, and somehow managed to play the tourney without anyone realizing who he was. Might have been the result of some sort of prop bet, I don’t know. Garry Gates wrote up the story over on Poker News at the end of the night in a post titled “The Amazing Phil Laak,” if yr curious.

Figured out at the dinner break yesterday I’d completely missed the damned Gaming Life Expo. The thing ran all four Day Ones, I believe, and I never did get a chance to hop over there to see what was what. Missed out on all of the freebies, too.

That post title is from something my brother keeps telling me when we have chatted this summer. Kind of an inside joke, with him repeatedly referring -- with some sincerity, actually -- to what I am doing here with that phrase. Am still enjoying the whole deal, but I am definitely looking forward to a couple of weeks from now when I won’t be so busy that days pass without my realizing it.

Various activities on the schedule today, including a get together with PN staff this afternoon (in which soccer is the focus, although I’m hoping to shoot a few hoops), a freeroll tournament for us all at dinner time (where I’ll be dead money, no doubt), and a PokerStars party over at the Palms later tonight.

Don’t plan on too late of an evening. Am sincerely aiming for a shorter response time when I wake tomorrow.