the weekly whinge

So I’ve been trying to win through the Pokerstars FPP satellite structure to the London EPT every couple of days for the last couple of weeks and not done too well; however last night I finally got a couple of breaks (winning with AT against AK by spiking a T on the river being most notable) and managed to concentrate and make a few disciplined folds and made it through to Sunday’s weekly final. So that’s about a 1 in 500 chance of me playing in the London EPT. w00t!

Anyway, the stats surprised me a bit

  122 hands played and saw flop:

   - 8 times out of 15 while in small blind (53%)
   - 8 times out of 14 while in big blind (57%)
   - 26 times out of 93 in other positions (28%)
   - a total of 42 times out of 122 (34%)

  Pots won at showdown - 12 out of 20 (60%)
  Pots won without showdown - 27

Don’t really know what to make of that. The “pots won at showdown” %age is lower than I’d like. The “while in blind” values were a product of the competition, it was _really_ tight (I guess because of the structure). I suppose in that environment playing lots of pots is valid (especially given the “pots won without showdown” amount), but I should have been prepared to fold more when I didn’t have much post-flop (improve that 60%).

These tourneys are fantastic value though, because with the number of people taking part 1/10 players have a 1/500 (or so) shot at a (nearly) $11k prize, which means the implied value (even without taking into account the secondary cash prizes) is around $2.22 for 10FPP. With the cash prizes (an extra $5000) the EV per FPP is 32c. Considering a pokerstars Tshirt is 500FPP I think that’s probably a valuation about 10-20x the usual.

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed this Sunday evening. I’ll let you know how it goes.