yaps: igp

Poker players often talk about getting their money in good. Of course, you can only know if you got your money in good after the fact; the hand must go to showdown. If if doesn't go to showdown, you'll never know what holding(s) your opponent(s) had, so you'll never know if you got your money in good or not. It's been a while since I cooked up a poker statistic, so it's high time for a new one. Without further ado, let me introduce to you - for the first time on any stage - what I'm calling igp. It stands for in good percentage. Here's how it's calculated:

step 1: start with the hands where you went to showdown
step 2: cull out the hands which had a negligible delta; the remaining hands are the examination set
step 3: for each hand in the examination set, determine whether you got your money in good; my current definition of getting your money in good is when your probability of winning the hand at the time when you wagered the most money was greater than 50%
step 4: the igp is the ratio of the number of "in good" hands to the number of hands in the examination set, multiplied by 100

My guess is that though I came out with a net loss last night, my igp was well over 50. I'll have to write some tools soon to do these calculations, and find out whether I'm right or just blowing smoke :-)

buy_in entry players hands place winnings

 44000  6000       6    44     4        0
 44000  6000       6    26     5        0
 44000  6000       6    18     3        0
 44000  6000       6    58     4        0
 44000  6000       6    63     2    92400
 44000  6000       6    67     2    92400

delta: $-115,200
Sit and go no limit hold'em balance: $4,283,000
balance: $12,324,804

Rarefied air

Making a profit of more than a quarter of a million play dollars in a single session is something I've only achieved once playing a cash game. I've done it 23 times playing sit and gos, including last night. My haul of $264,800 clocked in as my 21st best session ever. That means it was better than 98.8% of the sessions I've ever played. Rarefied air :-)

buy_in entry players hands place winnings

 44000  6000       6    74     1   171600
 44000  6000       6    56     3        0
 44000  6000       6    36     1   171600
 44000  6000       6    51     1   171600
 44000  6000       6    19     4        0

delta: $264,800
Sit and go no limit hold'em balance: $4,398,200
balance: $12,440,004

Señor Cuatro doppelsession

Last night, I had a doppelsession of a Señor Cuatro session I had on January 22nd. Here are the similarities:

                       Jan 22      Mar 7

sit and gos played:         6          6
first places:               1          1
third places:               1          1
fourth places:              4          4
total hands:              313        290
play money lost:    $-124,500  $-128,400

The play money lost would have been identical had PokerStars not changed their entry fee structure in the interim. Any time you can average roughly 50 hands a sit and go, you know you're doing something right.

buy_in entry players hands place winnings

 44000  6000       6    54     4        0
 44000  6000       6    31     4        0
 44000  6000       6    23     4        0
 44000  6000       6    82     1   171600
 44000  6000       6    64     3        0
 44000  6000       6    36     4        0

delta: $-128,400
Sit and go no limit hold'em balance: $4,133,400
balance: $12,175,204

Ofour

I've talked about ofers before. Let me define a specific subspecies of them - ofours. As you may have guessed, an ofour is an ofer consisting of four sit and gos. An "ofer four", in other words :-) In my most recent session, played last Thursday night, I had an ofour. Despite my failure to make the money, I actually played pretty well. In fact, looking at my ofours as a group, they're remarkably similar:

sum(delta)  sum(num_hands)  sum(place)  poker_session_date

   -203200             192          15          2012-09-17
   -200000             186          16          2015-10-27
   -200000             165          15          2016-03-03
   -200000             116          16          2014-09-22
   -364050             111          17          2012-08-14
   -200000              78          17          2014-04-05

I have a premonition I'll make the money at least once tonight.

buy_in entry players hands place winnings

 44000  6000       6    25     5        0
 44000  6000       6    45     3        0
 44000  6000       6    43     3        0
 44000  6000       6    52     4        0

delta: $-200,000
Sit and go no limit hold'em balance: $4,261,800
balance: $12,303,604

PokerStars is getting greedy

I love PokerStars. Their software has allowed me to enjoy playing poker for free for over seven years, honing my poker skills at no cost other than an investment of my time. However, I must say that PokerStars is getting greedy. I can think of no other reason why they'd increase their entry fees for sit and gos, which they've recently done. This is not the first time they've increased their entry fees, and it probably won't be the last. The problem they're likely to run into by doing this is a drop in sit and go revenue. Players will react by gravitating to other poker styles, and even other poker sites. Basically, what PokerStars has done is to disrespect their players, who are their bread and butter; they're essentially shooting themselves in the foot. Since software has a fixed cost, but can be deployed on essentially an infinite number of servers, PokerStars was already in the racket of printing money. Now they want to print more by cutting into what they used to distribute to the players. It's shameful. When I consider how ticked off this behavior makes me, a play money player, I can only imagine how outraged real money players must be. PokerStars is essentially stealing from its own customers!

Let me illustrate what a devastating effect entry fee increases can have. My sit and go sweet spot is the $50,000 wagered level. What you wager on a sit and go is the buy in plus the entry fee. I've played three different structures at this level:

 buy in  entry fee   entry fee pct   when

$50,000       $800       1.57        2012
$45,000     $5,000      10.00        2014
$44,000     $6,000      12.00        2016

Technically, the 2012 structure has a slightly higher total wagered amount ($50,800) than the other two, but it's in the same ballpark. Let's apply these three different structures to my sit and go results, and compare. Here are my current sit and go place counts:

place  count
1        216
2        253
3        251
4        207
5        163
6         93

        1183

Here are the profits I would have made had I played all of those sit and gos at a particular structure:

structure       profit

2012        $8,588,600
2014        $2,666,500
2016        $1,292,800

As you can see, this latest entry fee increase means I'll make less than half the profit I would have made had PokerStars not pulled the rug out from under me. That's highway robbery! I'm pissed off.

buy_in entry players hands place winnings

 44000  6000       6    35     3        0
 44000  6000       6    57     1   171600
 44000  6000       6    13     6        0
 44000  6000       6    39     2    92400

delta: $64,000
Sit and go no limit hold'em balance: $4,461,800
balance: $12,503,604

The big goodbye

There are several ways to exit a sit and go tournament. You can go out with a bang, a whimper, or something in between. Personally, I like to go out with a bang :-) I call that the big goodbye. My definition of a big goodbye is when the absolute value of your final hand delta is the largest absolute value of any of your hand deltas in the tournament. Of the 1,179 sit and go no limit hold'em tournaments I've played, a remarkable 566 ended with a big goodbye, including the first two tournaments I played last night.

buy_in entry players hands place winnings

 45000  5000       6    55     3        0
 45000  5000       6    58     2    94500
 45000  5000       6    57     2    94500

delta: $39,000
Sit and go no limit hold'em balance: $4,397,800
balance: $12,439,604

Failure to stomp

"Failure To Launch" was a movie about a man who had trouble committing to a romantic relationship. "Failure to stomp" is what I call it when three handed play is reached in a sit and go and two of the players have huge stacks, leaving the third with only a tiny one, and yet the two huge stacks don't silently collude with each other to stomp the tiny stack out of existence. Last night, in the final sit and go I played, I was the beneficiary of a failure to stomp. Three handed play was reached after 24 hands. At the start of hand 25, the chip leader had 2,790 in chips, the next biggest stack had 2,495 in chips, and I had just 715 in chips. All the two big stacks needed to do to ensure they both made the money was not to get in any big battles with each other, while betting big enough for me not to be able to call without a premium hand. All they needed was silently to agree to do this, and I would have been blinded off in short order. Instead, they let me hang around, then decided to have a battle royal with each other on hand 33. One of them hit the felt, gifting me with at least a second place finish. It was my only money finish of the night.

Perhaps I need to explain what I mean about silent collusion, and why I don't think it's unethical. When both players know it's in both of their best interests to act a certain way, they should be allowed to act in that way as long as their agreement is tacit. In other words, neither of them can make an open proposal that they play in this manner. This is entirely ethical, since there's no actual agreement, and either party can break the tacit agreement at any time.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4500   500       6    83      90   18    37        0
SNG   NLHE    45000  5000       6    18       6    2     4        0
SNG   NLHE    45000  5000       6    26       6    2     4        0
SNG   NLHE    45000  5000       6    40       6    2     3        0
SNG   NLHE    45000  5000       6    61       6    2     2    94500

delta: $-110,500
Sit and go no limit hold'em balance: $4,358,800
balance: $12,400,604