By poker_boy | 4 Comments
Last updated: Monday, November 29, 2010 | 125 Views Tags: 9 times out of 10, allin, conspiracy theory, fist place, full house, guts, hey guys, paranoid conspiracy, quot
We’ve had a reader question come in on the subject of poker. Let’s take a look:
I only started playing a few weeks ago. So far I’ve played about 25+ tournaments ($2, $3 buyins). FullTilt, PokerStars, UltimaBet mostly but others aswell.
I’ve never ever finished on paying place. I dont think I play poorly but Im not a pro either. Many times after 2-3 hours of playing Im at around 200th place out of 2-3000. Sometimes I play agressively sometimes safe. And somehow every single time my straight gets beaten with flush, my A flsuh with full house. My 7-K full house with 10-J fullhouse. I mean its ok to be unlucky but I cannot believe this can be true. If I had finished at least once on a paying position I wouldnt be typing this. im not greedy i dont want to win 2 grand for fist place, i would be happy for a $10 payout even for the 226th place. at least once in 25 games.
But no. And Im starting to think that it cannot be true. Just too much to be random. When u see somebody call my AA allin with 8-9 offsuit preflop and gets the straight on the river…u cannot be not suspicious can u? And again, if it happens once in a while its ok. He had the guts, and was lucky. But 9 times out of 10 i finish my tourney like this.
And I dont think individuals would hack the system or use spyware on others computers… I would even go that far and say its the system. U never know who is playing behind the seats… Maybe out of the 3000 players in the tourney there are 20 "bots" or other algorithms which play for the company. Would the be just a paranoid conspiracy theory? 
thanks spin, cheered me up a bit
Sites like FullTilt Poker, Poker Stars, Party Poker, Absolute Poker are the good sites to deal with.
You can play poker on these sites fear free. No need to worry with these sites. As these are the popular, recommended and mostly used sites.
Mike Smith
November 29, 2010
All card players are suspicious all the time - it goes with the territory. However, in this case you may be misguided in your suspicion. The truth is that at a $2-$3 buy-in, people will play any two cards, and in a tournament of hundreds, this means that every hand someone is playing some garbage hand that will come in. Players don’t care about playing 8-5 offsuit, because even if they bust out, they just buy in again for a couple of bucks. Online poker players play a lot of hands, especially at the lower limits. If you want to avaoid this phenomenon then you have to play at higher limits, or at a real table (even for pennies, it seems harder to lose face to face, so people play tighter. Don’t ask me why).
Take it as a compliment - the guys who taught me to play poker said you should never cry about bad beats - if you only get bad beats, then it means you’re playing good cards, and people are getting lucky against you. In fact, a quality poker player should only ever see bad beats, because when the game isn’t in his/her favour, they throw the cards away.
November 29, 2010
no believe
November 29, 2010
The average In the Money (ITM) % for tournaments is 15% - 18%, falling to 3% for a Final Table and 1% for top 3 places. The rewards are skewed heavily towards final table payouts, making ITM prizes only refills at the ‘petrol station’ on the journey to a big payday. The figures are for the average player and a new player can expect to be lower until the skills improve.
Therefore you can expect (on average) to be ITM a couple of times as a new player after 25 events but don’t worry if this doesn’t happen, the maths and volume of games will combine to produce these figures for you.
The rising blinds and number of players in a normal 4 hour tournament produces a lot of aggressive poker and unless you dominate your opponent (High v Low pair or Pair v lower non pair, or better kicker in an unpaired hand) for a 70-80% chance of success, non pair battles are at best 60-40 and normally 55-45 coinflips.
You will face at least 7 allin battles on your way to the final table and the odds of winning all 7 are 1/128, so it is important to pick up the blinds and antes to maintain a stack and try to pick fights with smaller stacks.
I mention the above to highlight why it is the maths, not bots or bad luck, that dictates you need to play a large number of games to achieve the expected average result. You need to learn how to build a stack in the early stages before antes arrive, how to maintain a stack by stealing blinds or restealing and know who to attack to give you the best chance of success.
It will take time to learn all you need to know.
November 29, 2010
25 shots at tournaments with 2000-3000 players is not much as others might have said, the more players the higher the variance you get !
Maybe you should try tournaments with less players when you survive 4 hours in a smaller tournament the chance of cashing is much bigger.
Don´t worry about "house" players in $2 $3 tournaments, this does not happen on well known sites, and certainly not in such small games.