Saturday, March 1, 2008

Jesus's update (sort of)

I got this email from Full Tilt today linking me to one of they Pro Tips articles. This one was by Jesus and he outlines his rapid descent from building his stack up very high to losing over 2/3's of it in 3 months. He doesn't go into too much detail, but basically just claims running bad as the culprit. Weird.

4 comments:

jason said...

I like this article. Getting your money in bad once in a while is OK is a new poker thought I have not heard of, but it makes sense. In O8, I may think I am a 40-45% favorite, but with pot odds and stack sizes calls are often correct. I suppose this is still getting in my money good, but I am still less than 50/50 to win the pot.

What about all the times we bluff with air and don't get called. We are certainly getting our money in bad and then sometimes we will be called. If we bet 1/2 the pot on the river with clearly the losing hand and are called only 1/2 the time this is a winning play.

Great article. Reviewing your hands with yourself and others to see if you made a good play is a better measure of poker play vs. always getting your money in good. Too often we concentrate on getting in your money good vs. great fold, great call, or nice value bet or great read.

Though we may sometimes laugh at the antics of a player like Kenny Tran I still marvel at some his plays. When he had K4 against the guy with QJ and value bets the river with second pair, crummy kicker in a tournament, and he is called, this is great poker. Great read and a great value bet.

I guess we can all learn something from Mr. Ferguson yet again.

Sushi Cowboy said...

Nice post Marsh, I guess I should check my spam mail more often. It is nice that he at least posted a response about his steep decline. As Marsh points out it still doesn't fully explain how he biffed off so much of his stack exactly. Even going 5% of original stack at a time that would mean 13 consecutive losing buyin's flushed down the tubes. But following his 5% rule the amount would actually decrease each time he lost a buy in and he would actually need to lose 21 or 22 buyin's to lose 2/3 of his stack.

Jason, I think you are talking about different things than Jesus when you refer to being priced in to a call when you are behind and bluffing with air.

Marshall said...

Jase I think you either read the wrong article or didn't pay much attention to it.

Getting your money in bad is not ok, and Ferguson doesn't say anything of the sort. He is simply saying that you can be playing perfectly correctly and still get your money in bad.

Example time: You have KK and have 1,000 in tourney chips. Big stack with 20k in chips raises to 400 and you are last to act. Do you shove? Of course you do. It's the right play to get all your money in this pot. Turns out the villain had AA and you got busted. Did you make the right play? Sure, yet you didn't get your money in good. This is what he means.

And I think you are not understanding what he means by getting it in good. He means getting it ALL in. Because after all the money is in, you can see quite clearly whether or not you got your money in good or not. And if you can't see it, you can go to various web sites which will paint it out in all its glory for you.

His main point was that while getting all your money in as the favorite is great, and very important to winning (especially tournaments), it shouldn't come at the expense of your OVERALL strategy. Meaning if ALL you worry about is whether you got your money in good or not, you are neglecting the big picture.

Example again: You are new to poker and have realized that when you go all in, you want to be a mathematical favorite. You decide that this is the key to winning and vow to ONLY get your money in when you are favored throughout a whole tournament. During the middle to late stages of the tourney, you pass up some opportunities to get your money in because you weren't sure you were a favorite, even though you probably would have won some nice pots along the way. The blinds soon have you as the short stack at the table, and NOW you finally pick up AA and get it all in. You accomplished your goal, but now even having doubled up keeps you the short stack at the table. Hmmm, maybe you should have played some more pots earlier and given yourself a chance to still be healthy instead of concentrating so much on getting your money in good? Basically he is saying don't forget the big picture and get too focused on getting it in good when there are other factors to consider.

royalbacon said...

I like that the apparent grammatically-correct way to say it throughout the article changes from "getting it in good" to "getting it in well".

I’m going to start calling it “getting it in well” from now on.

I really want an explanation for the HUGE drop that I pointed out. There’s got to be a reason.