Tiger Woods Study

[conan776 0]

Huh, well I tried to just mention this to Mr. N on MySpace, but that's a chore.The Tiger Woods EffectInteresting study; thought he maybe could get an article out of it

[DanielNegreanu 141]

Interesting... but not really.

[conan776 0]

Interesting... but not really.

Eh, fair enough.

[DanielNegreanu 141]

Eh, fair enough.

I just mean the results they found didn't end up being too interesting. The topic itself is fascinating but I don't think the results were very earth shattering.

[king_tanner 84]

Interesting... but not really.

[conan776 0]

The topic itself is fascinating but I don't think the results were very earth shattering.

I thought about it some more. Trying to extend the world of golf to the world of business as the study (PDF) does is almost so common as to be mundane. And there are several reasons this wouldn't necessarily extend to Hold Em.For starters, the study empirically rejects that being in Tiger's foursome has in itself any effect. Of course, the same can't be said for a poker tournament, where having the Tiger-Woods-of-Poker on your table is going to have more of an effect versus having him five tables away.Likewise, who is playing in the tournament and the rankings might be one of the few meta-game issues in golf, other than, I imagine, the weather which is just a luck factor. Hold Em is entirely more situational and meta-issues at the table level are a common part of thinking about the game.And, there isn't a 1000 player golf tourney starting every hour on the hour. Even if there were your buy-in level's equivalent of Tiger somewhere in the mix, your both unlikely to know it any time soon nor will it have as much of an effect.And the same time, supplemental data-mining tools exist, like Official Poker Rankings, so a player can have this super-meta information if they want. The study reinforces my own experience that having this information may actually be -EV. Admittedly, last time I moved up a level, I did find it educational to look up someone playing what to me seemed like a strange line, and I'd get a good hint as to whether that person was competent, and I'd know who to emulate. Or if I thought someone was a donk, I'd look them up just to confirm my read.But there should come a point where you should be able to trust your own reads (which you can never get on everyone anyway) and a long term database, like the weather forecast, isn't going to reflect this very minute's situation at the table. If I look the guy up to my right and see he's got a 2000% ROI, it's just going to screw me up and take me out of the moment.In live play, you can't help but know if a famous pro is at your table. But I've heard Pro's complain about how the kind of bad play, which this study suggests should occur, actually throws off their own game. In Hold Em, schooling effects and such probably can have an opposite effect and simply make for an overall tougher table. I'm sure this much has been discussed to death elsewhere (and in retrospect, I might be preaching to the choir).

[SCYUKON 0]

Geez - the field was requesting a mercy rule once Tiger was up by 10 on Saturday. Actually, once he shot 5-under on the "tougher" South course on Thursday, the tourney was over.I agree with OP - when he shows up the others are playing for 2nd. He knows it, they know it, and he knows they know it.