5. The funny thing about tournament play

Is that not all chips are worth the same. I know that, you know that, boring, yawn. But the implications of this are surprisingly interesting. And I'm not talking about ICM, because that's pretty dull too. What I'm going to talk about is the changes in the fundamental theory of the game that are brought about by this fact.

The first thing you can say about this is that each poker hand is no longer a zero sum game. Oh sure, the overall tournament is (minus the rake) but on a hand by hand basis, what one player gains in a heads up pot is not equal to what the other player loses. In fact it's possible for both players to take an expected value hit when the money goes in.

But how does this affect the idea of "balanced" play, which seems to have been the central theme of this thread. I came up with two earlier definitions of balanced play, which for cash games were effectively equivalent.

1. A play where across the range of hands with which you make this play you will make the same amount of net profit irrespective of your opponents actions. ie. on average you don't care what your opponent does.

2. A theoretical construct in which you attempt to maximise your expected value vs an opponent who is perfectly and instantaneously adjusted to the optimal play vs your true range.

The first version is not totally robust and doesn't actually exist in a tournament scenario. So the two definitions are no longer equivalent. Therefore for this thread we are forced to use the second definition.

The kinds of effects I'm talking about are most prevalent the flatter the prize structure. In fact a winner takes all tournament should play just like a cash game. So for the other end of the spectrum I'm going to use double-or-nothing sit'n'gos since they most effectively illustrate the point I'm trying to make.

First example: 6 man tourney, top 3 paid equal, bottom 3 leave with nowt. 4 guys left, blinds 200/400, ante 50. You have 2000 chips and have posted the BB. Guy on your right has 2500. Other two player have 1000 and 500 chips. They both fold and the big stack in the small blind pushes all in. What is the correct "balanced play".

Answer: Call with any two.

I'm not kidding.

That's because your theoretical "balanced" opponent knows what you're going to do before he makes his decision to push. If he knows you'll fold everything, like a typical ICM machine, then he can push with anything. But if you call with any two cards then he has to fold everything, even AA, because of the equity he loses in a race with you.

Here's the maths: If he folds he has 93% of the prize money in equity (ICM). If he wins all in vs you this goes up to 100%. If he loses it goes down to 44%. So he'd need to win 88% of the time to make for a good push. AA vs ATC is 85%.

Therefore if you call with any two here then he won't have pushed in the first place!

Of course I'm not advocating that anyone should go actually call with AA in this spot, let alone ATC, but this example illustrates some interesting points.

1. The static balanced range model is a useful concept but not the be-all and end-all of poker. I've made this point a few times and I think this effectively illustrates that.

2. Meta-game is potentially far more important in tournament play than cash games.

You don't often see the effect of this second point because in many tournament situations you're playing people you very likely won't play again, so you can't think too much of future hands. But if you played against the same people again and again then it would become seriously important. Let's say you played a series of high stakes hyper-turbo DON tournaments with the same group of sng pros online. And you decide to play a really loose style, calling super-wide, nothing like what an ICM calculator would tell you to do. At first you'd lose horribly. But then your opponents would start to adjust and wouldn't push into your blinds since they would know they're getting called. Ultimately, assuming each opponent stuck to playing correct ICM poker, applying accurate calling ranges to you, you would run out a big winner.

Obviously in a cash game this could never happen. In a cash game bad play is exploitable. You make money when your opponent makes mistakes. It generally doesn't matter what your opponent thinks your style of play is in cash game, as long as he's wrong (or you can adjust to make him wrong). In tournaments not all mistakes are exploitable.

Another product of the difference between cash and tournament play is the ability to team-up. If me and a bunch of my friends invited a top professional to one of our cash games, there is nothing we could do to avoid him destroying us over the long run, without cheating in some way. But if we invited him to come and play turbo sngs or DONs then we could beat him easily. We'd just have to all agree to make calls and pushes vs him which would be -ev for ourselves but also -ev for him. Everyone else at the table would benefit and in the long run we'd all win apart from him.

So, apart from emphasising the general weirdness of tournaments, particularly sngs/dons/satellites, what from all this is actually relevant to your poker?
1. Get past the idea of static balanced ranges, particularly for sngs. Sometimes it's just stupid.

2. If you're a high stakes SNG player, think more about your meta-game. If you can convince the regs you play with that you call crazily wide then that could be more valuable than making correct ICM decisions that make you look like a push-over. Certainly consider calling when the decision is borderline and your opponent is likely to be paying attention