Bizarre
I haven’t watch poker TV in quite a while and I got some urge to do it today for whatever reason, somehow I stumble on the Pokerstars.net Million Dollar Challenge, that I did hear from hmm, too many details. Anyway, I think the “pros” are either soft-playing or Daniel Negreanu felt a lot of sympathy for the star of that week.
This particular episode was pretty entertaining, a priest was the star of the show and that’s an interesting start considering the format of the show…
I will be a snob and explain some things:
The format of the show consist of three rounds, each round represent a prize, I will skip the first round because is uninteresting, once the priest won the second round he had 25k in his pocket, he could either take that money or play for 100k + a shot to 1mm, I was almost sure that the priest was going to take the 25k home but he impressed me and went for the 100k, to be honest anyone should take the 100k shot, 100% of the time if their goal is to maximize their EV and I don’t particularly think this is being greedy just smart.
The priest either have a 100% shot at 25k or if I were to guess against Daniel Negreanu he is probably 2:1 underdog, so he has ~33% equity out of the 100k if he decides to go for it, which it is ~33k on Expected Value (EV). The difference is ~8k which is pretty big, around 31% more than “playing it safe” and taking the 25k.
From my point of view that’s the right decision some people might argue that picking a 100% shot on 25k is worth giving away 8k on EV or 31% of the prize. Keep in mind that I assume that the priest is going to win 1 out of 3 times, which considering the quality of play I could be dead wrong and he is likely to win a bit more which in theory means that he can possible be making much more than 33k instead of 25k, so it becomes even an “easier” decision to go for it. I am also not counting the shot to 1mm which I am not sure how it works, so all in all it would be a terrible decision not to go for it, at least from the perspective of maximizing the EV.
I am trying to think of reasons to quit and take the 25k but to be honest I would never do it and I would not advice anyone to quit. Just by playing you instantly win ~31% more. (33k instead of 25k). And that’s assuming you’re 2:1 underdog, in other words, that you only win 1 out of 3 times.
Here’s the first part of the show I really liked the jokes of John Thomas “Spider” Salley.
For what is worth and if it matters at all I think everyone played really bad, specially the last hand and this is the reason why I think there’s a chance is either rigged or Daniel Negreanu felt a lot of sympathy for the Priest, which is reasonable I guess… /end of judgment
October 22, 2010