Wednesday, June 15, 2005

 

Don't Blame The Sleeping Satellite

Do you ever have one of those days when you think that people are posting stuff on forums deliberately just to provoke you ? Of course that's exactly what Derek was doing with his damnable Aces thread, but there was some interesting stuff on the Gutshot forum today which is worth expanding on here to a more select audience :-)

The whole satellite business is a difficult one to explain. Me, I don't like playing in them, they go against all my instincts which are to try to win all the chips. Partly because of this, I don't do very well in them (B+M super-satellites this is). Some of my dislike for the format probably clouds my arguments a little. But I do think that a lot of people are copping out with satellites. The old "but if I had a choice I would take the money" argument is fuzzy thinking. I encouraged people to consider the alternatives, so here are two :

1) Take £150 and plonk it down on number 23 once a month, and any time you win, go off and play a big tournament.

2) Save £150 a month and when you have enough, go and play your tournament.

Seriously I think these are perfectly viable alternatives, and yet very few of the satellite crowd would even consider them. 1) is total anathema to most people but is it really any different to playing a satellite ? Frankly for half the field it must be better. And if you really want to play, what's wrong with 2) ? I think people don't have the nerve to consider 1) and they don't have the gumption to stick with 2). Even though the rake is smaller in 1) and zero in 2), in fact it's a "positive rake" if you stick the money in a savings account. Even though you can use the time you would have spent sitting in a super watching people fold and waste time to play in a more profitable game. Personally I wouldn't take the second option because yes, once I had the money I would do something else with it. Like use it to advance my retirement by three or four months. Which means there's not a lot of point me playing satellites. Although option 1) sounds very tempting for the £5,000 at the Vic next month ...

Having said that I don't mind playing them on-line so much because sometimes you can take the cash (at least in W$), the collusion risk is much lower and mainly because of the added money. I can overcome my dislike if I'm being given $100 to play, which has often been the case recently.

PS I know the title doesn't make sense, but then again, neither did the song.

Comments:
This one's been driving me crazy. I've pointed out about ten times now that any comp or cash game can be your own personal satellite and I still have people writing rubbish like:

"WSOP sats are great ideal for the poor peeps out there who wana live their dream..."

As though regular tournaments that pay in cash somehow ban winners from using their prize money to buy into the WSOP. It makes no sense at all.

Yet while I'm tearing my hair out, I have to concede that in poker, I want to be surrounded by morons. Funny old game.

DY
 
Unlike the hirsute DY, my hairline is receding and thus I can not afford the indulgence of pulling my hair out, even though that is exactly what I feel like doing when I read comments like these from you guys. I see plenty of sense and nothing fuzzy in the decision to play these satellite events for a whole spectrum of players. Decisions are not and should not be based purely on EV $$, otherwise I’d never got to the pub or get on a roller coaster – playing poker is a sensory experience. We can run with this, though after the last couple of years, I’m not sure I can convert either of you.

Briefly:

What is the value of money? – Value lies not only in how we can spend it, but how we acquired it. – A life time’s savings vs 5+bonus on lottery?

Is money valued linearly? I’ve done this to death.

Emotional cost involved in decision-making:

Do 1000 £5 losses feel like one £500 loss? If not, (which I know they aren’t for me) they are not the same. Emotional cost as a function of money lost is not irrelevant and must be considered in decision-making. There is value in how we live our life (or feel in it), not just about chasing EV.

Do the £5 losses come from the same (mental) account as the £500 loss?

If not utility becomes very important

This is a very crucial since the different accounts utilise money in a different way. E.g. Playing a satellite/ going for a meal/ a bet on the footy. Buying in direct – a new bathroom, a car etc. The consequence of this is that buying in direct for a poker tournament is seldom the highest-utility option for that money, whereas for a satellite it the money might well be (when you weigh in other factors).

I suspect there are other soft arguments that haven’t been drawn out here (or even these ones done properly). But there is a more traditional EV argument. The majority of people will not play their ‘own money’ as they would with money they’ve won. In most cases, I suspect this is a benefit for playing sats vs savings. In my own one-off experience in a major event, 18 months ago which I qualified via PS, I felt this to be true. In one case I bluffed-raised a guy $1500 on the river in what seemed like a heartbeat, early in the event because it felt like the right move, would I have done so if I had stumped it up th dough myself - perhaps? Could I have 'felt it'? If that's what I did (or just got lucky). Even so I'm sure it's a factor for other players.

Well, as brief as I can be (but at least I have something else that I may try to write up)


chaos

Btw DY I’d mentioned Kahneman and Tversky to you before, they did plenty of research into supposed ‘irrational decision-making’ and concluded that people were loss averse, and consequently many of these decisions were not irrational.
 
The majority of people will not play their ‘own money’ as they would with money they’ve won.

But money they've won is their own! Once you win money, it's yours.

I can understand that the satisfaction of having money is non-linear. I know that the increase in happiness that I would have in going from having £0 in the bank to £1m is far greater than the difference in going from £1m to £2m, even though the gain in the same in both instances. But I am not sure that this comes into play in the super-sat vs tournament equation. In fact if anything, it should work in the opposite direction, with people preferring to play a comp in which first prize is $10,000 rather than a one in a five hundred chance of winning $5,000,000.

The chief merits of playing supersats are that the standard of play is very poor and that the establishment that hosts the satellite will buy you in, thus sparing you the need to carry large amounts of cash or travellers cheques abroad.

You say: "Decisions are not and should not be based purely on EV $$." This is true as far as it goes. So let's consider what 'sensory experience' people are maximising and give it a name. I shall call it 'utility'. So if you go to the pub, you are maximising your expected utility with respect to money and time.

What I need explaining to me is why anyone who is serious about playing in a big competition would experience a greater utility from winning their seat in a satellite than from winning they buy-in in some other manner.

Anyway, I still reserve the right to be annoyed at:

"WSOP sats are great ideal for the poor peeps out there who wana live their dream..."

as it fails to explain how a regular tournament doesn't either.

DY
 
I steered well clear of this argument on Gutshot, but I think I can safely mention a few points here.

chaos: Kahneman and Tversky. Exactly. I really must read this pair's work more deeply, because it offers fascinating insights into the human psyche. Wasn't there some experiment that they did with theatre tickets you lost that you had paid for vs tickets you lost that you hadn't paid for?

DY: As you say, you want to be surrounded by people not acting rationally, so why get annoyed when they act irrationally? Smile inside.

Andy: You approach the point about why these people play super sats, but your own rationality stops you from seeing it from their point of view (and, I'll be honest, the same goes for me).

But the point that neither of you mention (presumably because both of you are single) is that it's a lot easier to say to the other half: "I've won a seat in the WSOP, all expenses paid" than it is to say: "I've won $12,000 and I'm going to spend it on flying me to Vegas and entering the WSOP". I'd like to see how far that got you...

(Then again, I'm single, and it occurred to me. Perhaps I know more married people than you do...)

DY: You've said time and time again that there is no point telling people things that will do them good IF THAT IS NOT WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR. Either they won't change their ways (and won't thank you for it) or they will (and won't thank you for it).

These people just will not see, and they have no wish to see, the rationality of your argument. And when you look at the success of the satellites online, you have to assume that the majority of other players feel the same. This indicates an intrinsic lack of rationality amongst the vast current poker-playing populus.

Caro makes some excellent points on the subjective value of money, which has no rational basis. For example, going from $4300 down to $5000 down in the last half hour of a game does not feel as bad as going from $350 up to $350 down, even though that $700 you have lost in half an hour would have bought exactly the same amount.

One phrase of his that I keep repeating like a mantra is "Don't worry about getting even. You ARE even". Now, try explaining that one to most of the posters on Gutshot...


Long may the irrationality about money reign. That way fortunes lie....

Pete
 
"it should work in the opposite direction"

Not really. Except for the very few, winning 10k is not life changing money. Except for the very few, winning 5m most certainly is.

I think sometimes we argue what is good or right based on what we are actually good at, perhaps subconciously even. But this doesnt mean we should discount the value others get from them, whether it b tangible or soft.

I used to say, when poker involved getting dressed, that a losing player "was a winner in life". And I meant it too. The "value" of his play in EV terms was surely -ev, but mostly that was because the "value" was so very small for him. But he got enjoyment in so many other ways.

gl

DD
 
DY:

‘The majority of people will not play their ‘own money’ as they would with money they’ve won.

But money they've won is their own! Once you win money, it's yours.’

The reason I emphasized ‘own money’ is because there is a different association with money won, compared to money earned/counted, because one feels different to the other. With that admission we’re talking value. I’ve had some bad hits in my time, but the pain of doing my hard earned wages (especially when I worked at McD’s in my youth) in one day at the end of the month was considerably more than losing a greater amount of money that I had recently won. I once knew a rather dubious guy, who would seldom pay gambling debts, but always money he’d borrowed (which he saw as coming from wages) – he still owes me £100. It pissed me off & is patently wrong, but I could see how why he thought differently about the two.

This is one way of looking at the value of money, another is how we spend it. In some satellites, you have no choice but to play the event you are successful in the sat, this has value. There is no regret over spending the money alternatively – the only choice, once you’ve qualified, is to play the event or not– clearly the highest utility option is a no-brainer - to play (ok you could sell yourself). This is unachievable in other contexts: lose and it’s ‘I could have gone on a great holiday’, or, in Andy’s example, ‘retired a couple of month’s earlier etc’.

Of course, the other point is that when you win a satellite to an event in this way, you never own the money. This is hugely important – the package I won at PS was worth around $11k – I never had a choice and was delighted that I didn’t.
This is why it has, quite rightly, massive appeal to the poor people cited in your quote – what difference will a $5 satellite make to their kids education?

Even where there is choice & you could cash in your profit, you may well have made a conscious decision to invest the proceeds this way to begin with, before the sat – which helps to at least develop a different reference point. Also, it is uncounted winnings. I, like many gamblers, feel very different between money/winnings that are banked and those that are on-line – I am not indifferent, as logic might dictates, between taking 5k out of my bank account and blowing it, as opposed to blowing it from my gambling account. This isn’t irrational at all, imo.

No such holiday/pension/car emotional burdens from a satellite, maybe I should have gone to lunch instead, roulette, or just pissed it away. 10 satellites later and 10 missed dinners. Playing poker has value in itself for some, more than dumping it on a number on roulette. In my gambling experience I am more scarred by the big one-off losses than perhaps, the greater collective sum of lots of smaller f*ck ups.


The linear issue: Utility does not have to work this way at all (though, in general it is of course entirely sensible). If it did, we would or, perhaps should always, be risk-averse, never risk-taking w.r.t. money. I certainly don’t always subscribe to this, which is why I subscribe more to K&T than to Bernoulli/ Von Neumann & for example, is why buying a Lotto ticket is very right for a lot of people. The qualitative difference between $5m and $10 m is little to me, but 10k and 5mill is huge – I could never get to this ‘utopian’ state by playing 10k events for the rest of my life and when/if it is the destination that matters getting part of the way there has little value – (I know it’s the journey that counts!).

There is perhaps some merit it taking the curious perspective that the chances are extremely high that we won’t spend precisely all of my money once we’re dead & buried - & what utility is there to us in money we’ll never spend (well ok some), so why not blow that money now, for a life changing experience? OK, it’s a rather strange argument, but there is some sense in it when trying to understand utility and why we shouldn’t always be risk averse.

‘What I need explaining to me is why anyone who is serious about playing in a big competition would experience a greater utility from winning their seat in a satellite than from winning they buy-in in some other manner.’

Most people who play them aren’t serious, if by serious that you mean regular players or EPT/WPT wannabes. Emotional costs, pressure of playing with ‘own’/’counted’ money are still arguments that can apply to these players.



‘Anyway, I still reserve the right to be annoyed at:

"WSOP sats are great ideal for the poor peeps out there who wana live their dream..."

as it fails to explain how a regular tournament doesn't either.’

I believe, the points I’ve made cover this, it’s about choice.

In short, the problem that most people find is that they want the big tournies experience, it has high utility to them, but not high enough to make it the right decision. So they are rather caught in a trap. These sats are great for escaping from that trap.

I’m out for the evening, but I’ll look in later/tomorrow

chaos

Just caught DD - I like the winner for life quote, it's a pity that more don't see that, and maybe the 'fish' would get a little more respect (not directed @ AW/DY).
 
Peter,

I am bugged by the theatre ticket dilemma. I remember reading about it once, but I can’t remember much about it, but I am a little worse for ware. Ahh now its coming back to me – was it something to do with losing the tickets you’d paid for and then deciding not to fork out an extra say £25 for another set because you felt you were paying double? Didn’t remember it was K&T but it sounds likely (I’ve not read that much by them). I have to admit that initially it troubled me to accept that the people in their experiments were not behaving irrationally. Though, the defining of a rational action is a bit of a struggle.

‘Caro makes some excellent points on the subjective value of money, which has no rational basis. For example, going from $4300 down to $5000 down in the last half hour of a game does not feel as bad as going from $350 up to $350 down, even though that $700 you have lost in half an hour would have bought exactly the same amount.’

This is really is classic K&T reference points. They concluded that people were ‘loss averse’ (I know more repetition as opposed to the more popular view of risk-averse. The simplistic view I take is losing a bit less than a lot, is still losing a lot – and so we are trapped.


‘One phrase of his that I keep repeating like a mantra is "Don't worry about getting even. You ARE even". ‘

That’s good, I like this reference point a lot. The one I tried to employ and suggested to a couple of mates, was to imagine you were beamed into this spot (say tag poker) after dumping half your stack, how would you play the hand now? It was usually very different to how they did (I think wrote something on this on DD’s blog many moons ago).

‘These people just will not see, and they have no wish to see, the rationality of your argument. And when you look at the success of the satellites online, you have to assume that the majority of other players feel the same. This indicates an intrinsic lack of rationality amongst the vast current poker-playing populus.’

Are you playing devils advocate, or do share the same view as DY? If so why do you believe DY’s argument is correct?

regards chaos
 
I've never met "chaos" or seen a picture of him, but when reading his posts I always imagine he's a character from The Fast Show - professor Denzil Dexter:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/fastshow/characters/denzil_dexter.shtml

This is intended to be light-hearted so please don't take it as some kind of attack chaos!
 
oh dear - I'm not sure I dare look at the link - I've seen the fast show once or twice but I can;t recall the character.

Don't worry anon, I'm sure I've had worse.

chaos
 
Ok I'm upset. In my civil-service days I saw a few of those knocking around & thankfully I'm nothing like them! The one thing I envy in them, which I lack in an abundance, is am assiduous pursuit of knowledge -I'm too lazy, though it's something I hope to change.

I remember overhearing a conversation between a Denzil characters and another guy where they were discussing whether or not to model one more aspect of a problem and he quoted the old poem 'for want of a nail the horse was lost, for want of a horse the kingdom was lost ....'. It's a poem that is supposed to appreciate aspects of chaos theory. It was cringeworthy. Unfortunately, these guys don't focus on effectiveness they want the gold-plated solution when bronze will do.

Undoubtedly, I over-egg explanations but, as a rule, I try to write stuff that is useful to myself & others, though these days I'm a lot less interested in doing so.

cheers

chaos

A link that works:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/fastshow/characters/denzil_dexter.shtml
 
btw just so you can get Denzil out of your head: people I have supposedly look like over the years:

Dennis Bergkamp;
Stephen Hendry;
Lain Flack.

More renowned for talent than looks, unfortunately.
 
Some interesting stuff there guys.

I'm starting to think that I should just keep quiet about it anyway. It's great that other people want to play satellites because :

- The satellites are basically propping up the large tournament circuit. Without the dead money they provide the whole thing would implode. Thus poker is still "visible" and the new players keep coming in

- There is some good value online in terms of satellites, both directly as added money and indirectly as "WSOP reload" bonuses and so on.

- If I take a shot in a bigger tournament (anything from £500 up pretty much) there may be plenty of weak players who simply would not be there without the satellites. In fact, now I think about it, one of your biggest criteria when selecting a tournament to "shoot" at is how many satellite qualifiers will there be ? Which makes my recent choice of a $1500 "undercard" tournament at the Bellagio look a bit suspect.

- If young players with some potential are spending all their time trying to get on TV then that means they're not in my game online. Playing continual all-in-fest supers isn't good for your development as a player either.

So really it's great that other people want to play in them. It just annoys me so much the shite they talk sometimes :-)

Andy.

PS some people I apparently look like :

Frank Skinner
Essex & England off-spinner Peter Such
The twins from Bros (I wish)
Gareth from The Office
David Moyes

The list goes on.
 
Wsop sats from online generally include flights, accomodationand sometimes other bonuses that are extra added value.

Of course if you are playing via an online sat win and you win you will probably get sponsorship to enter many large buy in events like Raymer and Moneymaker have.

Even if you have no backers to ship a large %age of your win to then these buy ins can put a serious dent in your winnings eventually with no further success.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?