13 Responses to “WCOOP Live Sweat with Andrew Brokos (Part 2)”

  1. michaeldi11on

    I saw you haven’t turned off the notifications. If you don’t, every time a new tournament starts it will tell you in a popup and in the chat. Just something to help you clear some space next time you play on pokerstars.

  3. Jon_Allan

    … also if you double click a player’s name in the drop-down list at the top of the notes tab you can then ctrl-C and ctrl-V into Sharskope, OPR, etc. (Especially useful for odd characters in user names). I think Sharkscope has an overlay available now too.

  6. Jon_Allan

    The math of progressive knockouts is certainly not easy. When your bounty increases it adds incentive for others to go for you if you get short and also increases your payout if you come 1st and on Pokerstars they don’t allow you to chop them, so as the field becomes large this can be very significant when you get heads up.
    As an example I recently watched the final table of Pokerstars Knockout Week event 19 – a $50+$50+$9 one with 1800 runners. It was an interesting watch, especially as the third place finisher, Wizjut21, had only made one knockout of a player who had not knocked anyone out so only had $75 on his head. When it went heads up GotYouRead had $5,057.31 on his and GotADream had $3,943.27 on theirs. They made a deal for 50-50 and had to play for $700 (1st minus 2nd was $3,600 so they chopped up $2,900 in their deal getting $12,225 each) but were also not allowed to chop the bounties, so effectively they were forced to play for $9,700.58 (you get half the other player’s bounty then half is added to your bounty and then you get your own bounty so effectively it’s just the sum of the two) If Wizjut had knocked out one of the others first this 1st place aside amount would have been $7.7K or $8.2K, while if he’d got heads up without knocking out third place it would have been either $7.2K or $7.7K.
    While it is certain that there is a lot of value to knocking people out on your way to the win (GotYouRead managed to make $5K before getting heads up) this also highlights that there is definitely incentive to get in some heads-up practice if you plan on playing them as the final knockout is almost certainly going to be very valuable, even if you do only knock out that very last opponent. Furthermore in this instance heads up play was roughly 100bb deep yet, somewhat surprisingly, did not last all that long.

  8. Foucault

    Interesting stuff, thanks. I’ll admit I hadn’t really thought as much about the value of increasing my own bounty, though I think that’s most important when you are actually close to winning the tournament, which I never was!

  9. Jon_Allan

    I have not tried making a formula for knockouts or progressive knockouts but the former has been discussed on forums and in those cases the value of the knockout is indeed thought to be greater earlier and diminishes toward the direct reward amount.

    If we look at the example I gave above there is something interesting I think we should notice:

    GotADream knocked out Wizjut21 so when three handed the bounties were:
    Wizjut21 $75
    GotADream $3,905.77
    GotURead $5057.31

    If Wizjut21 KOed GotURead at this point he gets a direct reward of $2,528.65 and his bounty increases to $2,603.64 and he goes heads upwith GotADream.

    At his point the forced aside would have been:
    $700 + $2,603.64 + $3,905.77 = $7,209.41.

    Now note that GotURead and GotADream had a forced aside of $9,700.58 and that:
    $9,700.58 – $7,209.41 = $2,528.65 – $37.50

    i.e. The aside Wizjut21 would have played heads-up for vs GotADream was less by half his bounty less than his third place KO direct reward, and he would have just had half his bounty more than that placed directly into his account.

    So, it seems the value of knocking someone out (ignoring chip gain) at some point before this is equal to the direct reward (half their bounty) minus the value we assign to the incentive it gives others for knocking us out between said knockout and heads-up play, which (if they work this out too) is now more by half the amount you got rewarded with minus the incentive for the hands left at that point (it’ll be later on so they can subtract slightly less than you did before) which is again, of course, half your bounty minus a little.

    Hence the value of a KO in a progressive super knockout seems to aproach half their bounty from BELOW as you head to three handed play (but I do not know how to value that amount) but this is certainly very different from the normal KO (which approaches the bounty from above).

    Anyone – Do, of course, correct anything that you see is wrong!

  10. Jon_Allan

    In fact Arron Brown has, just the other day, put his 2c up on progressive KO math: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15/poker-theory/progessive-super-knockout-maths-1495643/
    Interestingly he says
    * My intuition of progressive super knockouts is 2,000 chips is worth more than twice 1,000 chips, up to some point of diminishing returns.
    he is saying that having more chips means you can try to knock people out without getting short yourself up to some point where you have so many chips that they start to become worth less again like a regular tournament.
    He ignores the fact that your bounty increases, in fact he says
    * The change to your bounty doesn’t matter to you
    which I do not agree with, as per my point about the incentive it gives to others (he is assuming here that we remain table captain for the rest of the tournament really, which would be nice of course!).

  11. Foucault

    Thanks, Jon. I’ll have to read this more carefully in the morning. I’m not entirely clear on what you mean when you say “the incentive it gives to others”. I’d argue that one of the nice things about having a bounty is that it encourages people to make calls that are +EV for you. Like, the bounty makes it possible for you to shove, and then for both you and one of your opponents to have a positive expectation when that player calls you.

  12. Jon_Allan

    By incentive I mean that the greater the bounty on your head the wider people should correctly get it in with you (since the equity they need in the hand is lower due to the bounty). You point out that the $EV could be positive for both parties involved in some spots and I agree, but the fact that you will be more likely to be all in with others (than another shortie with a lower bounty) increases your risk of ruin regardless (part of the extra variance you are now getting), and when you bust you can get no more bounties and no more of the prize pool.

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