Why I failed to do well

So I played in another Texas Holdem tournament on Saturday. I didn’t do well. I only won one or two pots which weren’t very big all afternoon. I was playing fairly conservatively, trying to survive and pick the right pots in which to get involved, but it didn’t work out. Read the rest to see my mathematical analysis of why my style of play didn’t work and why I didn’t like the format of the tournament as it encouraged players to make bad decisions and increased the luck factor over skill.

In this particular tournament which started with something like 43 players, we started with 10,000 in chips each. Blinds were $200 and $400 in the first round and there was an ante of $100. That last bit is crucial.

While I don’t have a hard and fast list of hands I’ll play and won’t depending on position, I do have general guidelines I use which of course I try to adjust based on things like who is at my table and if I’m sensing strength or weakness from a player and also simply to mix up my play so I’m not so predictable. Since I play fairly carefully (tight) in the early stages of a tournament, I wasn’t playing many hands. In fact I wrote a quick Perl script to calculate what percentages of hands I was seeing that were “playable.” This, of course, doesn’t take into consideration position. It simply deals 1,000,000 hands to me and compares each one with a list of “playable” hands, counting how many times I am dealt one.

#!/usr/bin/perl -l

$num_hands = 1000000; # Number of hands to deal
@playable_hands = qw(AA KK AKs QQ AK JJ TT AQs 99 AQ 88 AJs 
                     77 KQs 66 ATs 55 AJ KQ 44 KJs 33 22 AT QJs);

for (1..$num_hands) {
  shuffle();
  $hand = hand();
  $n++ if (grep(/^$hand$/, @playable_hands));
}

print "Percentage: ". ($n / $num_hands) * 100;

sub shuffle {
  @deck = permute(qw(AS 2S 3S 4S 5S 6S 7S 8S 9S TS JS QS KS
                     AH 2H 3H 4H 5H 6H 7H 8H 9H TH JH QH KH
                     AC 2C 3C 4C 5C 6C 7C 8C 9C TC JC QC KC
                     AD 2D 3D 4D 5D 6D 7D 8D 9D TD JD QD KD));
}

sub is_suited {
    return (suit($deck[0]) eq suit($deck[1]));
}

sub suit {
    local $_ = shift;
    s/.(.)/$1/;
    return $_;
}

sub card {
    local $_ = shift;
    s/(.)./$1/;
    return $_;
}

sub hand {
    local $hand = card($deck[0]).card($deck[1]);
    local $hand = $hand . "s" if is_suited();
    return $hand;
}

sub permute {
    my @list = @_;
    my @permuted = ();
    while (@list){
        push(@permuted, splice(@list, rand @list, 1));
    }
    @permuted;
}

The output was:

jamin@localhost 10:03AM% bin/holdem_stats.pl
Percentage: 9.2179

I lasted about 2 hours in the tournament. If we estimate that our table was playing about 30 hands per hour, that equals 60 hands total before I was eliminated. I have two points to make:

• 60 * .092179 = 5.53074

• 60 * $100 = $6,000

That’s right, during the two hours, I saw about 5 or 6 hands that were in my list of hands that I’m looking for as being “playable.” And over the course of 60 hands I spent $6,000 of my original stack of $10,000 on the ante alone. If you take into account the small and big blinds that’s an extra $4,500 or so on top of that.

So because of the antes I just don’t have the time to sit around waiting for an outstanding hand. Which is exactly what happened. Now, I also ran into some bad luck. AK failed to connect with the flop twice and I was forced to fold after heavy betting ensued. Pocket queens met a flop of AKK where once again heavy betting ensued between two other players and I was forced to fold.

So if I play in that format again I’m definitely going to have to adjust my play. I’ll probably loosen my opening requirements and play more aggressively. I’ll limp in more often with low suited connectors trying to connect with the flop. Or maybe I’ll go all-in sooner in an attempt to either double up early or at least win the blinds and antes. But I’d definitely prefer to play in a format that doesn’t encourage players to play hurriedly from the get-go. I don’t want to be forced to play a hand early on for which I’m at a disadvantage.

Tags: Poker