Tournaments: Public Measure Of a Player's Success (Part II)

See also

 Some professional tournament players get extra value by using other people's money. They may sell pieces of themselves at a premium. For example, they sell 10% of themselves for 15% to 20% of the buy-in to a few different people. Many get completely staked because they can't make enough money to support themselves. These players are experts in self-promotion. They need to attract investors who will help defray the costs of tournaments, including travel, hotel expenses, and the ever-increasing tournament entry fees tacked onto the cost of the buy-ins. If their make-up figures get too large, the staked players turn to other backers, so there are profits to split up when they win.

If a professional tournament player exhibits extreme emotion when he is knocked out, one should remember that this is his livelihood because he may not be able to beat the side games. In tournaments it's boom or bust. When he hits, he may overspend and will not be prepared for the inevitable long dry spell.

Some tournament players swap pieces with other players. This gives them an extra rooting interest and they figure it helps to even out the luck factor, so they won't have to wait as long between cashouts. If the pieces swapped are less than 5%, there is probably no harm, but anything more than that could be an incentive for collusion.

Some top tournament players may have better technical knowledge of a particular game than some big-limit players, but don't have the other winning skills. They have not moved up with a good edge through all the levels. Some may have an academic knowledge of many of the concepts for making money, but they lack the necessary discipline to employ these skills on the playing field. They may be poor at game selection or may have difficulty controlling their losses, but these are not important skills in tournaments. Think of the top tournament players as Olympians during the time when professionals were not allowed to compete in the Olympics. They were good, but not as good as the best professionals. That doesn't mean that tournament players aren't capable of making great reads and great plays.

Why do many of the same players do well in tournaments year after year? The main reason is that they are the ones playing in the most tournaments. If a record of entries were kept and a "batting average" were computed, the results would be more reflective of skill levels. Using a baseball analogy, let's say that finishing in the money is a single, finishing at the final table is a double, finishing in second place or third place is a triple, and winning is a home run. It is hard for a person with 20 at bats for the year to get as main total bases as someone who has 150 at bats.

Why aren't more complete records kept? It's in the best interest of the people who run tournaments, publish magazines, and produce television programs to promulgate the myth that the most successful tournament players are the best players. This provides a greater incentive for players to enter tournaments and enhances the tournament as a product.

In major tournaments, the final no-limit hold’em event has the highest buy-in and the highest payout. It is the event that is most often televised. A lot of bad plays are made. One reason is that no-limit hold’em isn't played very often except in tournaments, so the players don't get much practice. Also, only selected hands are shown on television. Some plays may not be as bad as they look, since viewers don't have complete knowledge of what happened on preceding hands. Players will put their opponents on a hand and go with their feelings. It is easy to second guess the plays while looking at all the hole cards, the way they are shown on television.