I'm playing poker pretty much 100% of the time while there. I'm playing in the WSOP Senior's Event on Thursday... then playing mostly cash games on the other days.

Tournaments are long-shots to cash... you need three things to be successful...
(1) you need to have some level of skill
(2) you need to get get lucky multiple times (i.e., you need to win coin flips and hit some draws) and
(3) You need to avoid getting unlucky (i.e., you need your KK to hold up against QQ, or your flopped top set to hold up vs villain's flush draw).

All those things can go right for you, then you get cooler'd when your KK runs up against AA. This happened to me at an Aria tournament, where I was the chip leader at the 9-person final table. Ran my KK into the 2nd-chip leader's AA, then ran JJ into same player's QQ a few hands later and was out 9th!

Posted by schwarze on 6/20/2023 12:10:00 PM (view original):
I'm playing poker pretty much 100% of the time while there. I'm playing in the WSOP Senior's Event on Thursday... then playing mostly cash games on the other days.

Tournaments are long-shots to cash... you need three things to be successful...
(1) you need to have some level of skill
(2) you need to get get lucky multiple times (i.e., you need to win coin flips and hit some draws) and
(3) You need to avoid getting unlucky (i.e., you need your KK to hold up against QQ, or your flopped top set to hold up vs villain's flush draw).

All those things can go right for you, then you get cooler'd when your KK runs up against AA. This happened to me at an Aria tournament, where I was the chip leader at the 9-person final table. Ran my KK into the 2nd-chip leader's AA, then ran JJ into same player's QQ a few hands later and was out 9th!

The poker equivalent of blowing a lot of 9th-inning leads, I suppose.

This is a good analysis and exactly correct - why I stopped playing tournaments.

Pocket Jiggities is always a trap. Worse hand than 7-2 off

Posted by mildnhazy on 6/20/2023 2:31:00 PM (view original):
This is a good analysis and exactly correct - why I stopped playing tournaments.

I used to only play tournaments and actually cashed in my very first WSOP tourney in 2005 (finished 118th out of 2069 entries in Event 22, $1500 NLHE, for $2500). That was the event in which Mark Seif (considered at the time to be the best player without a bracelet) won his first bracelet (he was sitting at my table on my immediate right). Of course, my AA lost to somebody's 99 shove preflop.

Then 8 years ago, I had an epiphany. I was playing on day 2 of a Venetian Deep Stack tournament. There were around 300-350 entrants. I busted in 29th place, and turned my $600 entry fee into a payout of about $1200. This was around 2:00 pm of day 2 (after playing 12-14 hours on day 1). I then sat down at a cash game and won over $1000 in about 3-4 hours. My first thought was "why am I wasting a day and a half to get a min-cash?" Ever since then, I play mostly cash games, and have only played in a few tournaments since then.

(The link I posted doesn't show the Aria tournament I cashed in, not sure how they keep track of this stuff )

Posted by d_rock97 on 6/20/2023 2:52:00 PM (view original):
Pocket Jiggities is always a trap. Worse hand than 7-2 off

Yes, but at final table when short-stacked, it was a no-brainer preflop shove.

That's cool - I never played in the WSOP - must have been a great experience just as the poker boom was peaking. And yes, for sure the amount of tourney time vs cash game time can be seen as a waste. Plus the difficulties of succeeding that you raised........having said that, tournaments are more fun - as long as you recogize that luck will play a big factor.

You should try to play in the WSOP at least once. I've been at tables with Phil Hellmuth, Mario Ho, Jennifer Tilly, Vince Van Patten... just to name a few.

I suck way to badly at poker to enter tournaments. I love playing though and always give my money to others in cash games ha!

I have been addicted to chess the last couple months and have been entering some small ones online, i still suck, but I like losing because I know I made the mistake verse someone else getting lucky. Feels really good to beat an opponent too.

We are one-sixth of the way through now (27 games). If you don't like where you are in the standings, the good news is you have 83% of the games left to improve. If you do like where you're at, the bad news is there's a lot of season left to survive.

Admin was finally able to create an automated Standings Link. I copied the link to the top of page 1 of this thread, as well. This includes all owners, even those who only entered a couple of teams.

Posted by schwarze on 6/27/2023 10:42:00 AM (view original):
Admin was finally able to create an automated Standings Link. I copied the link to the top of page 1 of this thread, as well. This includes all owners, even those who only entered a couple of teams.

This is great. Thanks for working with them to get this done.

Looks like a few owners who only entered one team as fill-ins should be thinking about participating in the whole tourney next year.

FYI - I am going to be out of town from June 30 thru July 9. I will try and update the standings document as often as possible, but I may miss a session here and there. Admin's automated standings should still be created though.

The shared Standings Spreadsheet now has Data tabs for the 80M, 100M, 110M, 120M & 255M themes. If you want to check how the various selections are doing, these tabs will provide that information.

For example, in the $80M "BINGO" theme, the 31 teams that used all 25 squares have a cumulative winning% of .523, while the 52 teams that choose a straight line method are winning at .493. The 13 teams using the four corners method is at .476.

It's fun to compare records of similar teams in a theme. For example, in the $100M "Build a Team" theme, four people chose the "1996 Braves/Marlins/Phillies" combo. Two of those four teams are battling it out for the best overall record in this theme (60-28 & 59-29) while the other two teams are below .500. Why? Bad luck in 1-run games or some major roster differences?

In the $110M "Two Clones & Teammates" theme, the three teams that chose Sandy Koufax are below .500 as are the three teams that chose Bob Gibson. Of the five Pedro Martinez teams, three are in the top 12 records while two are below. .500.

In the $120 "One Franchise, Spread the Wealth" theme, only one person out of 96 chose the White Sox. That team is 52-36. Only one of the eleven Red Sox teams is over .500. The Indians were clearly the best choice for this theme as 11 of the top 19 records are Indians teams. Not every Indians team is winning though as two are in the bottom 10 in W-L record.

In the $255M "Draft 'em All - Dual Boxes" theme, teams using players from Box A have a .508 winning%. But what's really odd is the the American League teams have a cumulative .510 winning% despite their average salary being $33 million lower than National League teams. Scroll to the right of this tab and you can see that the 22 teams that rostered Babe Ruth are winning at a .510 clip while the 12 teams that rostered Clayton Kershaw have a winning% of .480.

There's quite a bit of data to sink your teeth into.

Having some computer issues, so the google sheet standings may be delayed or even skipped a few sessions.