Final Tablin' the 50-50, and Tallying the BBT Part II

In a nice surprise twist, here's how my poker night ended on Tuesday after a 6-hour-plus battle in the nightly 50-50 tournament on full tilt:





I have to be honest here, guys. First of all, I was utterly and completely card dead for the first two hours or so in this thing, resulting in me sitting right around 2000 chips around the end of the second hour. Then, I astinbayned. I'm serious. I got KK, AA and then AA again in three consecutive hands. That was the Astin part. But even better was the Bayne part, where my first AA hand was up against KK and then the very next AA hand was up against AK for two big fat huge doubleups. I went from 2k in chips to 18k in chips over the span of about 5 minutes. Just plain silly.

From there I played what I can honestly say was some of the best poker in my life. I did get a couple of premium hands -- one or two more KKs and one QQ during the remainder of the tournament -- but otherwise my cards were pretty much shit both before and after my three-hand-span of astinbayneage. I stole so many blinds, and more than that, I restole so many blinds and steals, that I couldn't possibly count. It seemed like every read I was making was right. I bluff-raised big on several flops and nearly doubled my stack on pure bluffs, probably double-digit times without ever getting caught. I don't recall sucking out on anyone one time in the entire tournament, though it may have happened. I lost a ton of pots, including several big ones with big races or other setup type hands (that one JJ vs QQ small blind - big blind special hand comes immediately to mind), and some on pure bad calls by me (like calling allin with a big stack against another big stack with around two tables left with an offsuit Ace with a shitty kicker. Dumb dumb dumb, I was dominated and I lost half my stack on the play.). But for every time I lost a big pot, I seemed to have enough chips to withstand the blow and claw my way back. Almost every pot I won through to the final table was on a steal, resteal or bluff raise. It was just about my only set of weapons, but unlike most nights that didn't bother me much.

I got as high as 2nd in chips briefly at the final table. I don't actually remember a thing about the hand I lost most of my chips on. I know after that I pushed with around 100k and way in last with 5 players remaining from utg with 98s. I like that hand for a quick doubleup, which I knew the chip leader to my immediately right would call with his monster stack thanks to my previous donation. He flipped up QJo or some form of two mediocre overcards like that, I failed to hit the board and my night was over. Nonetheless, this is now two top-15 cashes for me in this 5050 tournament out of maybe 15 times I have played it, and this particular payout of $2400 is my biggest tournament cash since I won a little over 5k coming in second place in the 11pm ET nightly 30k 6-max tournament a couple of months back. Nothing like a little tournament love to sustain my poker habit for another month or two. I know I and other have written about this before, but I still think this 5050 tournament does not get enough credit for being bar none the best mtt structure in all of full tilt -- 3000 starting chips and 12 minute blind rounds makes for far more play and ability to wait for some good hands than almost any other tournament available out there, and some nights like last night there is even an overlay as well. Let's just hope I don't start donking again after this performance. No reason that should happen -- 5th place is awesome, but should not be the kind of thing that gets me all worked up. I would award maybe 35 BBT points to a 5th place finish in this thing.

Seriously, let's get back to the BBT for a minute.

One thing I did not address in my post yesterday was something I've heard mentioned in at least one dwarf's blog and one guy who's been a little tilty lately with his posts, which is that the BBT comprised too many events. That is an interesting critique, and not one which I had anticipated hearing. But I've heard it now, not just from them but from at least one or two other bloggers in the girly chat. How because of the nature of the scoring system we used, they felt "locked in" to playing as many of the events as possible, to avoid falling behind on a cumulative points basis, causing some to even play while not otherwise ready or in the best mindset to play, or even able to devote sufficient attention to the game. I will say this -- we hold these blonkaments every week like clockwork, and frankly a lot of us guys are going to be playing in almost all of these things anyways. I don't miss a MATH, a Mookie or a Riverchasers if I can help it. I've been to all the Big Games. I played the WWdN about 100 times in two years+ over at pokerstars. I love these regular blogger get togethers, and I'm going to be playing in all these games whether there's a BBT or not, whether "the points" matter or not.

So to me, it only makes sense that all of these events should be included in whatever regular BBT-like scoring scheme we are using. All this talk about the series comprising too many events sounds to me like a roundabout or indirect way of getting at a different problem that I have also identified with the scoring system we used, and actually it was also the substance of some significant debate between Mookie, Al and myself as we were preparing to launch the BBT. This will be the subject of today's BBT discussion.

As Al, Mookie and I mulled over the payout options for the fabulous prizes Al had magically lined up for the top 5 BBT leaderboard finishers, I raised the question to the group of whether we could address what I perceived to be a bit of a problem with last year's WPBT scoring system -- namely, that it was unclear who was more deserving of bragging rights, the winner of the total points or the winner of the average points per event. Because, for example, let's say one guy plays in 30 events and runs up 1550 BBT points. Then Bayne plays in all 39 events and runs up 1700 BBT points and wins. If you ask me, I argued to Mookie and Al, the guy with 30 events and 1550 BBT points clearly had the better season. At over 51 BBT points per event, he blew away the 43 ppe that Bayne would have in my example above. That figure is not even close. And with 30 events played, the 1550 total points guy has clearly played enough for his 51 ppe to be measured fairly against Bayne's 43 ppe. To me that's not even a hard question -- with those two stats above the guy with lesser total BBT points but a much higher average BBT points per event wins the prize in my book. This was a debate I had over the span of maybe three days with Al and Mook before we started up the BBT. I was and remain a firm believer that, with five total prize spots available, I would have probably awarded one or two of the five prizes to the most total BBT points, and the other three prizes to the top 3 guys on the list of average BBT points per event, with a minimum of most of the events. Maybe 25 of the 39 events, maybe even a few more. No duplications, of course, so you just move down the list of highest average ppe until you find 3 people to pay off who did not already win one of the two awards for most total BBT points for the year.

In the end, I let myself get outvoted this year as far as awarding any points to the highest average finisher with just a solid minimum (66-75% maybe) of the total events played. But, if you really read all the comments to yesterday's post here, as well as the statements about there being "too many events", this suggestion to use the average points per event as the key barometer of performance instead of using the total points would complete address those concerns. This way it won't be like there are "too many events", because unlike with the current system based purely on aggregated accumulated total points, there will be absolutely no need for anyone ever to play any given event. All you'll have to do to compete for the average points per event title is play a certain minimum number of events, but as long as you reach that minimum, you will not have to play a certain event if you don't feel like it and are ok with your average ppe staying where it is for one more tournament. So, if you're Iggy and you've already played in 32 of the events but then two weeks ago you just don't feel like playing the MATH that night, then there is no reason to, and skipping the event won't hurt your BBT standings unless someone else who does play does so well that it raises their average over all the events he's played above your average over all the events you have played. Similarly, all the comments to yesterday's post would all be addressed by this scoring scheme. Go and read them.

As far as Alan's commentary from yesterday, where he basically takes the position that the point of the BBT should be to encourage participation among the entire group, and that therefore we don't want those bloggers or players who cannot afford, say, the Big Game to therefore be "priced out" of winning the BBT points race. Under my system, you could skip all three of those Big Games and still easily be in the race for highest average points per event. So that address Alan's concern there, generally speaking. And to be clear, even though I love Miami Don and as far as I'm concerned everything he says is presumed to be correct and brilliant, but I do not share his view from yesterday's comments as far as not caring if it's costly and that either you blonkeys can man up with some cold hard cashish, or sit on the sidelines and watch the big boys battle it out. As I mentioned yesterday, I am strongly into the community and general participation aspects of this thing, and that is why I mentioned yesterday I suggest a 20% payout formula rather than a purely-cash-based because I recognize that focusing just on those players who win cash will not foster as much community and participation as a slightly wider payout scheme, but one that still only sends the BBT points to the people whose performances really justify such a reward.

In general I'm a big fan of the per-event scoring charts for these series, as long as you've got a nice high minimum number of tournaments played. IMO they clearly adjust appropriately for guys who can't afford the Big Game, or guys like me who can't ever play in the Sunday afternoon HORSE events, etc. Blinders had a great post a few posts back with a bunch of per-event charts that I think tell a great story of the real successful players in the BBT.

So my real proposal for scoring of any future BBT-style of events is: top 20% of field awarded BBT points in each tournament, weighted more heavily towards those players who cash. All-around BBT champion would be awarded by the highest average BBT points per event, with a minimum of 66-75% of the total BBT tournaments played. That's the way I wanted to do it this year, and it's definitely the way I would recommend for next time. If there is a next time....but that's a topic for a later post this week.

Now if only someone can devise a scoring system that factors in a luck factor, both the luckiness of the starting cards received by everyone and the luckiness of flops hitting one's hand. That's what I'd like to see -- a leaderboard that awards a total score of average BBT points per tournament, but then adjusts each player's average ppe score downward for the uber-luckboxes, and upward for the totally unlucky bastages. Something tells me I would look real good on a list like that. I am by far the unluckiest poker blogger out there.

Do not forget the second post-BBT Mookie, and the first one that does not also fall on a national holiday. Go time will be tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt, with a password as always of "vegas1". There is also the Dookie tonight at 11:30pm ET, which I also expect to play (stud hilo as I recall, non-turbo even I think), as long as my internal body clock can keep things going for one more night here after last night's marathon final table run in the 5050.