New Look

As you can see there is a new look for my blog. Not sure if I like it much yet. If it doesn't grow on me then I will probably revert back to the previous template or continue my search for a new one.

Comments? Suggestions?

Displaying Progress

For any goal to be achieved you need to periodically assess your current progress. When you were in elementary school collecting box tops, or in boy\girl scouts selling cookies\pizza's\whatever the current fund raiser was, it seems someone would almost always make a poster board thermometer with some method to indicate how much progress had been made and what was left to be done.

I wanted to do something similar but this being the internet age and all, poster board just wouldn't do. So I setup an Excel spreadsheet to track my daily progress and since posting a bunch of figures each day would be difficult to read and boring, instead I developed the thermometer graph you can see to the left.

As of today I have achieved 9.56% of my goal and there are 94 days remaining.

You can help this percentage grow by supporting my blog and inviting as many people as you can to visit and support also. If you are interested in directly supporting you could consider investing in shares. Each share is $4. So far 75 shares have been sold, there are 1425 remaining.

Craig

Butterfly Effect

Pretty much everyone has heard of it, some think it is an urban legend, other are convinced it is real, Hollywood even made a movie about it. But what is it that sparks a butterfly effect?

Why can one person or small group of people start a true wave that will span an entire stadium multiple times over and at other times those same people can't get even one section to participate?

How can one child convince thousands to send letters, or visit a website, or give money? Is it because he is a child? Not all children are able to spark the butterfly effect? Even if the child is sick he may or may not see the full power of a viral video, flash mob, or overnight sensation.

I will admit I had hoped to start a butterfly effect on my blog. Delusions of grandeur running through my head. I invite 100, who invite 100 who in turn invite 100 and before you know it I would have millions of visitors. And while I am no were close to that, I haven't given up hope just yet.

My FaceBook group has 21 fans and growing. I have seen a huge increase in visitors and many of you are supporting the site in every way that you can. I have sold 75 shares for the WSOP.

I will continue to send twitter updates, FaceBook status changes and I will continue to put up content (mostly poker related) in the hopes that the butterfly flapping his wings in Brazil will cause a hurricane here in Las Vegas (figuratively only).

To all the visitors so far. Thank you. I have reached 6% of my goal. 59 days to go!!!

Craig aka PokerShark70

How To Evaluate Poker Tournaments for Maximum Profit - A starting point

How To Evaluate Poker Tournaments for Maximum Profit

First let me say that I am not an evangelist for Arnold Snyder and his books. But as a person always trying to learn more about my chosen profession I have to understand and internalize everything that I read about Poker to the point that it makes sense to me. So I present to the AVP community the following breakdown of three tournaments that we have been discussing.

The three tournaments I selected are:

• * 2010 WSOP Event #3 $1,000 buy-in (WSOP)
  
• * Golden Nugget Daily $105 buy-in (GN)
  
• * Venetian Deep Stack $340 buy-in (VDS)
  

The data I will be presenting here I offer in MS Excel format to anyone who requests it, just send me your email address. My purpose is to truly understand the best way to evaluate the local tournaments to maximize profits.

I have 4 different evaluations of the available data that I will present

• - Blind Off Rate
  
• - Big Blind Increase Percentage by Level
  
• - Relative M Over Time
  
• - M Relative to Starting Chips
  

Blind Off Rate

The blind off rate is the estimated amount of time that your starting stack would last if you never played a hand. This form of evaluation is in my mind relatively useless as even if you were “card dead” it would not be proper tournament strategy to never play a single hand and eventually get blinded out of the tournament.

While I don’t think this graph shows anything that we don’t already know, the GN tournament drops off fast, the WSOP tournament has a much gentler decline. The GN tournament would last about 2 ½ hours, the VDS about 4 hours and 40 minutes, and the WSOP is 5 hours

What I do find interesting about this graph is the very sharp drop off that you see on the VDS line. While not nearly as steep of a drop off as the GN tournament, it is nowhere near as flat as the WSOP tournament

Section Conclusion

While the WSOP tournament gives you the most play and has the flattest blind off rate the VDS tournament gives you almost as much time for 1/3 the cost. I don’t think this is anything surprising and I believe that the Original Poker Tournament Formula for evaluating tournaments correctly identifies these facts (see The Poker Tournament Formula graph below).

Big Blind Increase Percentage by Level

The first evaluation of the data that I find to be useful is an analysis of how much the big blind increases from level to level (another equally important but unevaluated analysis would be the Cost Per Round which would include the blinds in the analysis. I can add that later)

The data in this graph points to two main points that I feel are relevant to comparing tournaments.

• Average Big Blind Increase Per Level
  
• The peaks of one tournament compared to each other.
  

Average Big Blind Increase per Level

It is kind of hard to see because the other tournaments obscure the line but when you look at the data for the WSOP tournament it is very obvious that for the first 3 levels the blinds increase 100%, 100% and 50% respectively. After the third level (with the exception of the 7th, 9th, 15th, and 17th levels) the percentage of increase is between 20 and 33%. As we already know the WSOP tournament is marathon, not a sprint.

For the GN tournament (one of my personal favorites to play) the average increase for the BB is to say the least shocking. Of the three tournaments evaluated for this report this is most obviously a donkfest. 5 of the levels have 100% increases and one of the levels has a 200% increase (level 8 when the Big Blind goes from $2,000 to $6000).

Looking at the VDS, the rate of increase is definitely different from either the WSOP or the GN. I don’t want to say better because that is a relative and subjective statement. There is only one increase that is 100% (level 5 when the BB goes from 200 to 400) but there are 5 levels that have a 50% increase (levels 2, 6, 15, 21, & 50). So the VDS tournament blinds are the slowest on average of the three tournaments evaluated (32% average per level compared to 33% for the WSOP and a whopping 84% for GN)

Peaks from one tournament to the other

I think that a careful review of the data shows that the WSOP peaks are early and then it settles down into a steady increase. The VDS peaks really only once but also settles down. The GN tournament is seriously a crap shoot when evaluated strictly by the percentage that the blinds increase level to level

Section Conclusion

I think that this is the first real gap in The Poker Tournament Formula’s analysis of tournaments. When you input the numbers into TPTF spreadsheet the WSOP has a patience factor of 28.77 and a skill level of 6, the VDS has a patience factor of 20.44 and a skill level of 6 as well, and the GN has a patience facto of 5.7 and a skill level of 3. While this seems to correlate with the findings of this section it really doesn’t.

• The VDS tournament actually has a lower average blind increase yet with TPTF the patience factor is 8.33 less. While I am sure this is due to the 20 minute difference in the blind levels the fact that the blinds are on average more flat would suggest that you can have more patience.
  
• The WSOP tournament seems to front load the blind increases at the start while the VDS spreads out the increases more evenly across the entire tournament. This could be due to the creators of the WSOP tournament wanting to facilitate more starting players but designing the tournament to knock out a large group of those starting players early and then settling in for a longer more drawn out process for those that make it through the first hurdle.
  
• The GN tournament has a patience factor that is 81.2% lower than the WSOP and 73.2% lower than the VDS, the average blinds increase of 84% per level which means that each level that you play is exponentially faster than the last level. This fact is completely missing from TPTF.
  

Relative M Over Time

To fully understand the pressure of the blinds on a poker tournament you must evaluate a players M (introduced to me by reading Harrington on Hold’em volume II). There are two methods of evaluating a tournaments M. The first (and I believe more important and informative) is the Relative M Over Time which accounts for the blind off affect, and the M Relative to the Starting Chips that I will discuss next.

Looking at this graph, which is compiled by looking at the M for each level after accounting for the blind off rate, you see that the VDS tournament is on paper better than the WSOP with an M that is higher for all of the levels before being blinded off. The trick to understanding the graph is to understand the affect that the 20 extra minutes that the WSOP has for each level. Looking at the data may make it easier to understand

LEVEL	WSOP	VDS
1	60	80
2	35	50
3	14.5	35.5
4	6.67	17.36
5	2	9.23
6	0	3.6
7	0	.58

Is this important? Can we learn anything about a tournament based on evaluating the Relative M over time?

Section Conclusion

I believe that this is important when you take into account other factors. With the above data you will have an M of 0 by the 6th level if you play in the WSOP event. In the VDS event you could make it to the 8th level before truly having an M of zero. So the longer rounds in the WSOP tournament allow you to technically stick around longer but by the third level your M is 14.5. Many pros feel this is well into the danger zone

What we can learn is, the TPTF evaluation of an individual tournament is not adequate. What is needed is a detailed analysis of multiple tournaments. What would be even better is an evaluation of all the available tournaments to that this type of difference can be identified.

Finally what I think is to be learned by this analysis is that even though a tournament has a large starting M (look at the GN tournament with a starting M of 106.67), the starting M has little or no bearing on how fast or slow a tournament is.

M Relative to Starting Chips

The second component of evaluating M is to look at how each level’s M relates to the starting stack. The first measurement point for this evaluation will be the same as the previous section (WSOP – 60, VDS – 80, GN – 106.67). However what we are looking for is how quickly the line drops to zero. The better the tournament the more arch we will see in the line. From the above graph you can see (and it should be no surprise) the GN tournament drops like a rock while the WSOP and VDS tournaments have a much more pronounced and gradual curve.

For the rest of this section I will be dropping the GN from the discussion it should be obvious at this point that this tournament is ultra fast (even faster than TPTF indicates).

The question then is which tournament has a better M relative to starting chips. My interpretation is that the VDS starts out with a better M but then with the exception of a few levels (2, 7, and 8 ) has a bigger drop in M per level. A bigger drop in M is not as good as a smaller drop in M. That being said, the difference is not very significant, on average only $0.71 with most of the difference occurring in the first 8 levels the argument could be made that the differences between the WSOP and VDS tournaments is statistically insignificant.

Section Conclusion

I am not yet convinced that you can evaluate a tournament by evaluating each levels M in relation to the Starting Chips. The difference between the WSOP and VDS is so small I can help but to think that on this point it is really a judgment call and nothing concrete.
What is interesting is to note that while TPTF gives both the WSOP and the VDS tournament a skill rating of 6, the patience factor is 40% higher for the WSOP tournament and this evaluation does not support that finding.

The Poker Tournament Formula

The above graph provides the salient details that TPTF provides about a tournament; Blind off Rate, Patience Factor, and Skill. To take each aspect of the graph you see the following

• You would blind off slower in the WSOP, next VDS, finally GN. This is not surprising as the creators of these tournaments have designed them this way. In some ways this evaluation is stating the obvious
  
• You would also see that the WSOP requires more patience than the VDS which requires more patience than the GN. Again something that you might think is obvious but I think is misleading. The other forms of analysis show that while the WSOP tournament takes longer, the patience factor in relation to the M is almost identical to the patience factor of the VDS tournament. For sure the WSOP tournament does not require 40% more patience than the VDS.
  
• Finally the skill level. Since 6 is the highest skill level presented in TPTF it is hard to argue that both the WSOP and VDS tournaments require a skill level of 6. However I have a huge exception with rating the GN tournament a skill level 3. As all of the other analysis of this tournament shows, this tournament is fast, will require that you be very lucky, or can seriously outplay all of the other players.
  

Final notes

What is the point of this analysis? For me I want to understand the way that a tournament is set up so that I can pinpoint when and where the best place to play is. I am on a limited budget both for money and time as I have not yet made the leap to full time player. So finding the tournament that offers the best bang for the buck is crucial. Does any of this analysis help you play JJ before the flop? No, except that if you are playing at the GN and you are in level 3 or higher your chip stack is probably going to make those cards either All in or fold, but you already knew that didn’t you?

My method of evaluating the tournaments and comparing it to TPTF is just the starting point. I encourage more discussion on the subject for two reasons. 1) the more we educate ourselves and choose the correct games for each of our own level of play the more money we stand to make in the long run, 2) the more we educate ourselves and stay away from tournaments with poor structures the sooner those tournaments will either end or change.

This analysis of tournaments has mentioned the cost of the tournament but has not factored in the cost into any of the calculations. It should be noted that you can play in 3 VDS tournaments for just $120 more than 1 WSOP tournament. And when you go into battle isn’t it better to have three bullets than just 1?

One final note if you have additional methods that can be used to evaluate the tournament please share them. The best thing we can do for each other is to help each other become better players and that should start with game selection.

PokerShark70

Two different methods that you can use to help me get into the 2010 Word Series of Poker

The Problem - How to get $6,000 for tournament buy-in fees for the 2010 World Series of Poker

I have come up with two methods that you can use to help me get into the 2010 WSOP.

Solution #1

Before I get to the first method that some people may be interested in (others not so much), I need to discuss a little bit about how the poker tournament system works. So bear with me for a bit (if you already know how tournament poker buy-ins work you can skip down to "The Solution - Multi Tournament Fractional Ownership" Section).

If you know me you know that I love poker. I read about poker, I play poker, I teach poker. When I am not at work I am thinking about, planning for, and reviewing poker hands. You should also know that Poker isn't my full time job just yet. I have responsibilities (like 4 kids, a wife, rent, car payments, and bills) and I take these responsibilities even more seriously than I take poker.

What this means is I play live tournament poker about once a month right now. While this is great, and more than I was able to play before moving to Henderson 6 months ago, it really isn't a "full time" effort.

There are some things that you may not know about large buy-in tournaments like the World Series of Poker (WSOP). Specifically, how a part time semi-pro like myself can play in tournaments that cost anywhere from $1,000 - $10,000.

Currently there are 3 main funding paths open to players.

• Direct Buy-in. This means that if a player wants to buy-in to a $10,000 event they take $10,000 out of the bank, go to the casino and pay for the entry (the entry could be as much as $11,000 for a $10,000 tournament if there is an entry fee. The WSOP does not have an additional entry fee, the entry fee is subtracted from the Buy-in).
  
  This is the most difficult method for a semi-pro player to take because to play in a reasonable number of WSOP tournaments requires a minimum of $6,000 and as much as $145,000 (if you wanted to try to play all of the Hold'em events). In fact this direct buy-in method can be difficult for even a seasoned full time pro.
  
• Satellite Tournaments. A Satellite tournament is a smaller, lower cost tournament where, if you win, you win an entry into the larger more expensive tournament. There are two types of Satellite tournaments in the WSOP.
  
  • Single Table Satellite. A single table satellite is 10 people who pay the same amount to play, and first place is given all of the money for winning. For example if the buy-in is $120, first place would pay $1,000. If the buy-in is $1,050, first place would pay $10,000. (the extra amount is the fee that the casino charges to have the satellite).
  • Multi Table or Super Satellite. A Multi-Table or Super Satellite takes as many entries as possible. The number of people who join determines the number of places paid. Usually this would be 1 winner for every 10 entries so if 100 people sign up, 10 people would win the same amount, an entry to the more expensive tournament. For example, in a MT\SS with a buy-in of $120, if 100 people signed up, the top 10 finishers would each get a $1000 tournament entry chip (A tournament entry chip is not valid for cash, only for entry into another tournament). Usually this type of tournament is not offered for only $120. It would be more normal for a MT\SS to have a buy-in of $1060 and the winners would receive $10,000 a tournament entry chip.
• Sponsorships, Backers, and Selling Shares. The last ways that poker players have for entering tournaments is to have sponsors, backers, sell shares, or a combination of the three.
  
  • Sponsors - The top pros have sponsorship deals with well known companies like Coke or Pepsi, as well as sponsorships from the prevalent poker web sites. A sponsor pays the pro to wear their patch or to say something specific during an interview. To get a sponsorship deal you pretty much need to have won or gone very deep in a large televised tournament. The benefit of a sponsor is that the player keeps 100% of their after tax winnings.
    
  • Backers - Some players have backers. Backers can be friends who hedge their tournament entry fee investments by offering parts of their winnings to each other or one or more people who provide money to the player for the tournament buy-in. While the situation of players in the same tournament owning a piece each other can be ethically murky and can border on collusion if one player doesn't play fully to knock someone out when they can, these deals are not technically banned. Another potential issue is that many times these deals are handshake deals. There have been several times where the backers have had to get their winnings from the player only after going to court to prove there was a deal.
    

    Another form of backing a player might have is known as an Angel Backer. An Angel backer is someone who invests either the full tournament buy-in or part of the tournament buy-in for players that they like for a return of a percentage of their winnings, usually 48% - 60%. This backer however is not likely to be a participant in the actual tournament (although there is nothing that would prevent them from being a participant. However if they were it brings to mind the same collusion issues mentioned above).
    

    This type of backing is great for the poker player because they don't have to worry about earning and saving for the buy-ins and can focus on playing good poker. When they win, the backer and the player wins. When they loose, the backer takes the hit. Of course if the player doesn't win they risk loosing their backer and being required to find their buy-in for the next tournament in one of the other methods discussed here

  • Selling Shares - Selling shares is very similar to backers however the poker player has the opportunity to sell shares to someone they may have never, and my never meet. This method is also known as Fractional Ownership. With traditional backers the poker player gets their buy-in from one person or a select few people who pay the large buy-in (the most expensive tournament in the WSOP this year is $50,000). With Fractional Ownership, the poker player is looking for hundreds or even thousands of people willing to invest $1 - $10 per share. The shares are good for a specified percentage of the after tax winnings of the player. Here is an example:
    
    • I need $10,000 to buy-in to the WSOP Main Event
    • I estimate that the taxes on my winnings will be 40%
    • I am willing to offer 60% of my after tax winnings
    • I want to offer 2500 shares at $4 per share
    • Any individual investor can buy 1 - 2500 shares, what ever they are comfortable with
    • As a player I have my buy-in. My backers those people who have purchased shares, have an interest in my winning. In this example one share is worth .02% of the %60 of any after tax winnings. If we use last years Main Event as an example, where Joe Cada won $8,546,435, One $4 share would have been worth $738.41, a 18,460% ROI ($8.5 mil minus 40% for taxes = $5.1 mil. 5.1 mil times 60% = payout pool of $3 mil. $3 mil / 2500 shares = $738.41). In this example an investment of $100 for 25 shares would result in a payout of $18,460.
    • Of course there is no guarantee that a player would win 1st place. In fact, there were 6,494 entries into the 2009 Main Event so any one individuals chances of winning first place are very very small. In fact using this method for backing, a player would have to make it to at least 99th place before there was any positive ROI (beating out 6395 other players and playing flawlessly for 4 days).
    
    
    The good things about Fractional Ownership are:
    
    • An investor can look at the track record of the person they want to invest in and make an educated decision on the investment potential.
    • The player gets to set the number of shares, price per share, and the percentage of after tax winnings they are willing to offer. The higher the percentage of the winnings they offer, and the lower the cost of each individual share, the more likely the player will get enough investors to provide the full buy-in.
    • The investor can choose to invest in just one share or buy up numerous shares if they feel that the investment is especially good. An individual investor can invest as little at $1 (or from the above example $4) or as much as the total available shares times the share price
    • The investor is given a certificate for the number of shares that he owns. No back room handshake deals to prove to get paid
    • The player gets their buy-in into the high buy-in tournament
    • When the tournament is over the results are published for the world to see on several websites like www.wsop.com and www.cardplayer.com. Many events are broadcast on TV shining additional light on the actual results. Since the payout, amount kept out for taxes, and the prize pool percentage are all declared up front there is no worries that the investors payout will be less than what they expected.
    
    
    There are some drawbacks to the standard Fractional Ownership plan:
    
    • Players need a method to present their investment opportunities. Where can a player find 2,500 investors willing to put up $4.00 per share or 250 investors willing to put up $100 for 25 shares? There is only one site that offers Fractional Ownership that I know of right now, www.chipmeup.com. I have not used there services for a few reasons: They charge a fee to the player, their system does not provide a good method of defining the percentage withheld from the gross for taxes, their system is heavily weighted towards online play not live tournaments as money is transferred from chipmeup to the players online poker account. To get the money for live tournaments the player must cash out those funds and possibly pay additional fees. All of this a) reduces the total amount available for the buy-in, b) limits its adoption for live play, and/or c) requires the transactions all be completed weeks or even months before the live tournament is scheduled to start to allow for enough time for all the money transfers. Not to mention the unknown legality of transferring money to and from online poker sites and the impending UIGEA law that could make getting funds from the online sites even more problematic.
    • All of the current systems out there for Fractional Ownership are focused on a single tournament. The WSOP is 57 individual tournaments. So for a player to get backing for each WSOP tournament they would have to set up 57 different share offers. This means 57 different fees to the facilitator, 57 different groups of investors, 57 opportunities for an investor to be upset if the player busted early in one tournament and took first place in another tournament.

Summary - Multi Tournament Fractional Ownership

The solution is very simple. Just like in a single tournament fractional ownership plan I am offering 1,500 shares for 60% of the after tax prize pool. Each share costs $4.00. I am looking for 60 people interested in investing $100 for 25 shares.

The goals for this solution are as follows:

• Collect $6,000 to be used for entering the following 2010 WSOP Tournaments
  
  • Event #3 - May 29, 2010
  • Event #13 - June 5, 2010
  • Event #24 - June 12, 2010
  • Event #36 - June 19, 2010
  • Event #47 - June 26, 2010
  • Event #54 - July 1, 2010
  Each of these tournaments have a buy-in of $1,000. In 2009 a tournament with the same buy-in attracted 6012 people and first place paid $771,338.
• Offer 1,500 shares at $4/share for 60% of the after tax prize pool with 40% of the gross being withheld for estimated taxes
• Unlike the Single Tournament Fractional Ownership system offered by chipmeup.com, each share purchased directly from me would be eligible for .04% of the after tax prize pool for all 6 tournaments.
• 100% of the sales of shares goes directly to the tournament entry fees. Any administrative costs would be paid for by me.

As an additional benefit, if I enter any WSOP tournaments other than the 6 listed (This could happen if I have a deep run in one of the 6 tournaments listed and spend my own money to enter, or if I am able to satellite into other WSOP tournaments) I would include 60% of the after tax winnings from those additional tournaments into the prize pool.

Now for the stuff that you knew had to come when someone is asking you to invest in something that might not make money...

All investments involve different degrees of risk. You should be aware of your risk tolerance level and financial situations at all times. All investments are subject to risk and may result in the entire loss to the investment. This is not a guarantee for the successful performance of an investment and we are expressly prohibited from guaranteeing against losses.

Investments in Shares are transferrable but non-refundable. Investing in this or any other Fractional Ownership plan does not give you any rights or privileges to what tournaments are entered or how individual hands are played. Poker is a game of skill and luck.

As the offerer of these shares I will commit to playing to the best of my ability and not to play impaired by alcohol or drugs but I do not and cannot guarantee specific hand or tournament results.

If none of that scared you and you would still be interested in purchasing shares please contact me by email craigdrummond@cox.net. And if you are not interested in Fractional Ownership, no worries, you can still help me out... with my totally free to you solution #2!

Solution #2

The second solution takes just a little bit of time and will not cost you a dime. My blog is set up to present ads from different vendors. You see these ads on all sorts of websites. To many these ads are just noise on the page that you must wade through to get to the content you are looking for. Now it is against the rules of one of the ad providers to ask that you come to my blog just to click on the ads. So what I am doing is asking you to support this site in whatever way that you can, exploring all of the content, offers, and options.

To get enough money to enter the 6 WSOP tournaments I want means that between now and April 16th, my blog needs as many people as possible to visit and explore all the links that the blog has to offer as often as they can. The more people reading my blog, the more people that will be checking out the different areas that my site can lead them to.

Basically what I need is visitors to the blog. Visitors who will do more than just read what I have to say. So I am looking for all of my friends from Facebook and Twitter to recruit their Facebook and Twitter friends and hopefully they will recruit their Facebook and Twitter friends to visit my blog several times a week and click on any links that interest them.

With all that I could possibly get to the number of visitors needed in time for the start of the 2010 WSOP. That means I have 62 days left. Can you help? Can you bookmark this page and return a few times a week to review what is new, and explore the new options that are displayed? Can you invite your friends to do the same?

Like I said. Doesn't cost you a dime, helps me out tremendously.


Craig Drummond
PokerShark70