Decent Poker, Another Missed Hand History and MTT Winning Percentage

I played some good poker on Thursday night, sadly probably my best night of poker in a few weeks despite only ending up around a hundy overall on the night. In Riverchasers, I got lucky early and flopped a set of 7s against lightning36's TPTK on a board of A76, and you just know when you flop a set against a guy with an Ace you are in good shape. I easily doubled up and from there it was off to the races. I played some great poker throughout the tournament, but in the end I was a bit short stacked, thanks in no small part to my losing 3 out of 3 60% favorites when allin preflop against short stacks when down to two tables, and eventually I found myself with A8o utg at a 5-handed table, and with the 10th place stack out of 13 players left in the field. I pushed, got called by (of course) the JackAce, and then a beautiful 876 flop fell. 5 on the turn, and you just know the straight card is going to hit the river and give me a chop. Shit. But nope, no straight card. Just a Jack. And IGH in 13th place. Like I said though, it was a good run, much better than I have done in any recent blonkaments so I cannot complain.

Before I forget it was pointed out to me as well that I got part of the hand history wrong in the Mookie hand I wrote about yesterday. That's my bad. It's not the first time nor that last that will happen, but as usual it doesn't really change the point I was trying to make in the post at all. I knew with virtual certainty that Kat was on a high pocket pair, and I made a move that I knew Kat would respond to by pushing in the rest of her stack, and yet I did it anyways even though I knew I was 50% or maybe slightly less to win the hand. It's a gross play and when I do that like I said yesterday I obviously have no one to blame but myself. Pushing in with a bunch of outs and maybe around 50% pot odds is fine, if you have a solid amount of fold equity to go along with the push. But if you know your opponent's chips are all going to go into the middle when you raise, and you've only got a roughly 50% chance of winning the pot, and it's early in a tournament where you feel like you have a skill advantage of some kind, then it's simply a donk move to raise and willingly commit your entire stack early on a race situation. I need to focus more on that as time goes on, especially with BBTwo slated to start up this weekend.

OK with that out of the way, I want to mention briefly something that was mentioned to me in that chat by a guy I did not recognize last night in the Riverchasers tournament. I guess the guy was looking up the people at his table on one of these poker tournament history sites, and out of the blue he says to me in the chat that I have an incredible, "unheard of" (as he put it) win percentage in my lifetime tournaments. I asked him what he meant, and he said that according to the site he was looking at, I had won nearly 5% of 1100-some tournaments I had entered, and that that figure is significantly above anything else he could recall seeing from any other player.

I will admit, I was intrigued. Not too intrigued to leave a profitable cash table I was playing at at the time, but at some point on Friday morning before leaving for work I did fire up pokerdb and check it out. And you know what? I think he's right! It shows me as having won 4.76% of 1119 tournaments entered on full tilt over the past 22 months or so. Something like 55 victories in those 1119 tournaments. Although I have high confidence in my poker abilities, and in particular in my poker tournament abilities, this is not necessarily a statistic I figured I would be that much higher than anyone else on. But based on the players' comments in the chat box on Thursday night, I went ahead and did a quick n dirty search of a bunch of other players on pokerdb, focusing in particular on players I know to be better / more successful tournament players than myself. I checked out some bloggers, I checked out well known internet tournament guys like PokerPro and Thay3r, and I ran searches on a bunch of real life poker pros like Lederer, Gus Hansen, etc. And guess what? My 4.76% winning percentage really is higher than all of them. I didn't find a single guy (or gal) with a higher figure than myself in fact. Now to be honest I only spent maybe 5-10 minutes looking this stuff up as I was on my way out the door and since, frankly, none of this actually matters at all anyways. But I have to admit, I find the whole thing pretty interesting.

Why would I have such a higher winning percentage in full tilt poker tournaments than all these guys who are clearly better and more successful at poker tournaments than me? At 4.76%, I don't even recall seeing anyone whose win % was even 3% other than myself. What the F is up with that? How could that be? My first thought was something like, maybe I'm playing too conservative or something, and that's why these other guys have won 300k from poker but haven't had as high a winning percentage as me. But then when you think about it, that can't be right -- I'm not playing too conservative because I'm winning too many tournaments. That's just dumb. Too conservative because I'm cashing but failing to win too many times, maybe. But winning too many tournaments meaning that I'm playing too conservatively? That makes no sense at all.

So I'm thinking, maybe this is because I play a ton of satellites, which is without a doubt what I have focused on primarily during all of 2007, after focusing much more in 2006 on cash tournaments as opposed to satellites to larger events. But, even playing in satellites, why would I have twice the winning percentage of all these other dominatingly superior poker players to myself?

So who can tell me, why is this the case? And if I am winning 4.76% of my tournaments, so much higher a proportion than all these wildly rich and successful players, then what does that mean about my play? Should I be stepping up in buyin limits? Should I be playing more tournaments? What's the story with this?

OK don't forget Kat's donkament tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt (password as always is "donkarama"). That is the $1 rebuy extravaganza that has probably caused me more tilt than all other poker tournaments put together. But it's always a good time. And whatever you do, make sure to come out and play the latest Big Game this Sunday night at 9:30pm ET on full tilt (password is a very fitting "donkey"), which will mark the first tournament of the new BBTwo and will become part of our first Player of the Week points race as well to play into the weekly Sunday afternoon big-guarantee full tilt tournaments. Best of luck in the BBTwo to everyone, and I hope to see you on tv in Australia!