Jump to content

How Many Of Say The Last 15 Wsop Me Champions Do You Say Were Flukes?


Recommended Posts

  • Replies 115
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

I figured if I was going to wait that long I'd best make it worthwhile!
lots of guys think that way, then are done in just a couple words. congrats on your preparation & training.
Link to post
Share on other sites
I signed up to this forum ages ago but I haven't really ever got round to posting, but this thread is interesting so I'll dive in. Please don't flame me for having an opinion even though I haven't posted before :club: So here goes with (brief) thoughts on the last 15 winners:1993 - Jim Bechtel: I think he was an amateur at the time but he made the final table in '88 as well and he's pretty respected. Making the $50k HORSE final table in 2006 would suggest to me that he wasn't a fluke!1994 - Russ Hamilton: Other people have already made pretty accurate remarks about Russ. I would say though, that he doesn't play as much as some other winners and he cashed in both the 2004 and 2005 MEs.1995 - Dan Harrington: Evidently a legend and a brilliant player (evidenced by his back-to-back final tables in '03 and '04 and his WPT title last year) but I think in the years after his win he didn't do an awful lot. Maybe good evidence of someone proving their worth years after winning.1996 - Huck Seed: Just a good player; I don't know anyone that would claim Huck was a fluke. I really enjoyed watching his deep run last year.1997 - Stu Ungar: What more can be said about Ungar? Tremendous player although he got very lucky on the final hand in '97. I guess that's proof that even the best need a bit of luck.1998 - Scotty Nguyen: Incredible amount of tournament cashes (although, to be fair, he plays almost every tournament going). He's won other titles and has 4 bracelets - if you think Scotty's a fluke you must be joking, baby.1999 - Noel Furlong: The first of what I would consider the donkey contingent. Bit of a shover and really hasn't justified his win.2000 - Chris Ferguson: While I can understand the people who've said he got lucky the year he actually won it, surely Ferguson's proved that he's a good player? He seems to get deep in the majority of tournaments he plays and has bracelets in a variety of events to show that he's not a one-trick pony. His personality could use some work though. He actually has a worse sense of humour than Greg "I used to be a stand-up comic" Raymer.2001 - Carlos Mortensen: Good, solid tournament player. Tends to avoid the limelight a bit more than some more recent champions but he followed up his win with some impressive results.2002 - Robert Varkonyi: Yeah, he's crap, but to be fair to him he never claimed to be any good. Unlike people like Moneymaker and Gold at least Varkonyi always seemed to realise he was a lucky donk and was grateful for everything he got.2003 - Chris Moneymaker: His play in 2003 was truely awful but I honestly think he's improved since then. I can't remember what year it was (maybe 2005) but ESPN showed his 1st day and I was impressed with some of his plays. He's still only slightly better than the average WSOP entrant but at least he's showing signs of improvement.2004 - Greg Raymer: Played well in '04 (gotta love his composure against Matusow) but his run in '05 was what impressed me. He seemed completely unruffled by the pressure and actually thrived on it. I don't recall seeing him get lucky even once (although he did avoid getting unlucky a lot). If Aaron "biggest donkey ever" Kanter hadn't crippled him with that horrible play Raymer may very well have defended. He hasn't done loads since and his all-in in last year's WSOP Europe was atrocious but 2005's ME alone means Raymer avoids the "fluke" category.2005 - Joe Hachem: Probably the most impressive since Ferguson. The year after winning it he final tabled twice at the WSOP and went deep in the ME, outlasting more players than Raymer did the year before. He got it all in with AA preflop to be outdrawn - respectable way to exit. He's also had deep runs in the Aussie Millions and, more recently, the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo. Hachem's also won a WPT title. One of the best deep stacked tournament players in the world.2006 - Jamie Gold: He thinks he's a lot better than he is, but equally is nowhere near as bad as people make him out to be. The truth lies somewhere in the middle. He played the big stack brilliantly in 2006 and anyone who leads for that long can't have done it entirely on luck alone. Granted, he got a good run of cards but he played them well. Having said all that, I'd much rather Cunningham or Wasicka had won (Wasicka's bluff against Cunningham on that final table was classic). Gold's another one who I think has shown significant improvement after winning and will eventually be a consistent tournament player. He needs a haircut though.2007 - Jerry Yang: Easily the worst play I've seen from anyone to win a ME. If Kravchenko or Kalmar had had a few more chips he would have been in deep trouble. His massive overbets were... let's be kind... brave. There were one or two occasions where if someone hadn't done something daft there's no way he would have won. Lee Childs laying down QQ to him despite seeing how loose he'd been playing is the prime example. Time will tell with Yang obviously but I can't see a particularly bright future for him.
I'm fairly sure Yang hadn't been playing like that before the final table, the super aggression was different from his normal game. Gold had a huge run of cards the whole last 2 or 3 days.
Link to post
Share on other sites

None. Winning the world series of poker, with massive fields, top pros, idiot donkeys, etc is not a fluke. It takes skill, whether people like to admit it or not. some of the winners are "amateurs" who didn't hit the pro circuit or weren't successful, that doesn't mean they're flukes. They have more bracelets than Phil Gordon.Maybe that was a bad example.

Link to post
Share on other sites
None. Winning the world series of poker, with massive fields, top pros, idiot donkeys, etc is not a fluke. It takes skill, whether people like to admit it or not. some of the winners are "amateurs" who didn't hit the pro circuit or weren't successful, that doesn't mean they're flukes. They have more bracelets than Phil Gordon.Maybe that was a bad example.
fluke3 (flūk) n.
  1. A stroke of good luck.
  2. A chance occurrence; an accident.

How does that not apply to some of these winners? The word accident is a bit harsh, but when Varkonyi won, was it not a stroke of good luck and a chance occurence? The way I look at it, if one were to apply odds to a player in regards to winning the WSOP and you are realistically less then 1/field, then you are a fluke. Or, if you played a 5000 player MTT an infinite amount of times, and your chance of winning is less then 1/5000, etc.I don't see why people take such umbrage at the word fluke, especially when referring to success in a MTT. By nature, someone's success in a single, isolated MTT is going to rely heavily on some form of luck. A fluke is just someone who beat the odds that one could intelligently assign to them.

Link to post
Share on other sites
More hands = more variance, but variance is positive as well as negative. More hands against bad players => more positive variance.
I agree with your arguments mostly, but I disagree with this 100%. Variance is virtually defined as how short term luck will be seen influencing your results. Fewer hands mean higher variance because it means that you never fully approach the statistical average.Simplest Example: I play 1 hand AIPF with AK vs 22. I either win or I lose. Pretty high variance. If I get to run 10 trials, the results should theoretically resemble me winning half and losing half.You can't really say that more hand vs bad players will result in more positive variance. You can say that it will result in you playing more pots with larger edges on average, but how your luck will break in those hands is independant of whether you're AIPF with AA vs 55 against Jamie Gold or vs DN.
In regards to the 800 vs 8000 debate, I would say that it takes more skill to win the 800 player/pro heavy tournament then it does to win a tournament with 8000 players, maybe 3/4 of them being dead money. However, I think it is 'harder' to win an 8000 player MTT, mainly because of how many times you would have to be all in and at risk to navigate a field that large.If that makes any sense at all. :club:
I like how you worded that.
Link to post
Share on other sites

Also, Phil Hellmuth (I think) had made a statement about what it takes to win the ME these days. It was something like:You get 5000 players together and they all flip a coin. Everyone who flips heads gets to advance. Then everyone flips again and everyone who flips heads again gets to advance. Eventually someone is gonna flip a coin and have it land on heads 10x in a row and that is the person who wins the ME.I think it's a good statement and speaks to the enormous volumes of luck that it takes to win a tournament with that many people in it. Obviously skill is important, but in any tourney, luck and variace are HUGE!

Link to post
Share on other sites
Also, Phil Hellmuth (I think) had made a statement about what it takes to win the ME these days. It was something like:You get 5000 players together and they all flip a coin. Everyone who flips heads gets to advance. Then everyone flips again and everyone who flips heads again gets to advance. Eventually someone is gonna flip a coin and have it land on heads 10x in a row and that is the person who wins the ME.I think it's a good statement and speaks to the enormous volumes of luck that it takes to win a tournament with that many people in it. Obviously skill is important, but in any tourney, luck and variace are HUGE!
Phil Hellmuth said that?!?!?! I think that's a little ott tbh. There's alot more to just flipping in a coin in the main event. I think it's possible to win it without winning 10 flips in a row. Maybe you have to win 10/15 (10 out of 15) flips, but you should only have to win 10 in a row if your shorter than your opp every flip. Get what I'm saying?
Link to post
Share on other sites

Btw, with the 800vs8000 argument. It's very simple,800 - Lower expected value in playing it, but easier to win8,000 - Higher EV in playing it, but harder to winSIMPLE

Link to post
Share on other sites
Phil Hellmuth said that?!?!?! I think that's a little ott tbh. There's alot more to just flipping in a coin in the main event. I think it's possible to win it without winning 10 flips in a row. Maybe you have to win 10/15 (10 out of 15) flips, but you should only have to win 10 in a row if your shorter than your opp every flip. Get what I'm saying?
It's about more than flipping coins, but you're taking the statement too literally. In a tournament, you're probably gonna face a significant number of 60/40s and actual coinflips for significant amounts of money. How you run in those will almost certainly determine a large aspect of your success in that tournament. He's not literally saying that you need to win every coinflip, but some good player (and some bad ones) will run like God when it comes to these situations where they have a rather small edge when the $$ goes in and those are the people who make the final table.
Link to post
Share on other sites

To win in an 8000 player field you need to double up 13 times. If you get it all-in as a 9:1 favorite you're only going to win 13 out of 13 25% of the time. Just proves that even if you're extremely skillful (always manage to get it in as a huge favorite) you still need quite a bit of luck.

Link to post
Share on other sites
I agree with your arguments mostly, but I disagree with this 100%. Variance is virtually defined as how short term luck will be seen influencing your results. Fewer hands mean higher variance because it means that you never fully approach the statistical average.Simplest Example: I play 1 hand AIPF with AK vs 22. I either win or I lose. Pretty high variance. If I get to run 10 trials, the results should theoretically resemble me winning half and losing half.
While the mean results of multiple trials of your example approach 50/50 due to the law of large numbers, it is not accurate to say that variance goes down as a result of the multiple trials (or conversely "fewer hands means higher variance"). The variance for multiple trials is npq, or in this case close to .25n. The more trials, the higher the variance.More importantly, my proposition regarding more hands vs bad players is really better expressed in terms of the coefficient of variation improving when you are against more bad players. The CV is the standard deviation divided by the mean...a measure of how much risk you are taking for a given amount of mean return...the lower the better of course.For the binomial distribution thats SQRT(q)/SQRT(np). Obviously this gets smaller as you have more trials (>n), and also gets smaller the higher your edge on each hand (>p) , which you would expect facing inferior players.
Link to post
Share on other sites
It's about more than flipping coins, but you're taking the statement too literally. In a tournament, you're probably gonna face a significant number of 60/40s and actual coinflips for significant amounts of money. How you run in those will almost certainly determine a large aspect of your success in that tournament. He's not literally saying that you need to win every coinflip, but some good player (and some bad ones) will run like God when it comes to these situations where they have a rather small edge when the $$ goes in and those are the people who make the final table.
I think you obviously need to win your share of coinflips but I can't imagine someone like Dan Harrington, for instance, getting in too many of those situations. It's possible to play small pot poker and build up your stack gradually even if you have various maniacs trying to shove pre-flop. Whilst you have to have the best hand hold up the majority of the time, the more skillful players can avoid getting in the situation where that has to happen quite as often. Also, they have the discipline to fold hands that they think might be ahead but don't want to take the chance for a lot of their chips. Where a lot of amateurs would instacall with say JJ against what they think is AK for half their chips some other players might choose to fold and pick up chips in smaller pots down the line.
Link to post
Share on other sites
I think you obviously need to win your share of coinflips but I can't imagine someone like Dan Harrington, for instance, getting in too many of those situations. It's possible to play small pot poker and build up your stack gradually even if you have various maniacs trying to shove pre-flop. Whilst you have to have the best hand hold up the majority of the time, the more skillful players can avoid getting in the situation where that has to happen quite as often. Also, they have the discipline to fold hands that they think might be ahead but don't want to take the chance for a lot of their chips. Where a lot of amateurs would instacall with say JJ against what they think is AK for half their chips some other players might choose to fold and pick up chips in smaller pots down the line.
Carlos Mortensen - "The thing about NLHE tournaments, if you have a medium or short stack, you have to keep picking up hands and keep winning them. If you have a big stack, you never have to win a showdown"
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

Announcements


×
×
  • Create New...