turtleknife_poker_blog

About Knock-Out Tournaments at Full Tilt Poker

Pulled this from another thread...

The thing about KO's that is different IS the KO factor. Too many players go after the KO exclusively and lose sight of the goal, to win the tourney. This is ok to a degree but often gets a lot of people in trouble early. Here is where YOU come in and use Tournament Indicator to get YOUR KO's!

ALWAYS be aware of stack size of people entering a hand and yet to act. MOSTLY you want to be concerned with those that are already in it.

IF a short player limps or calls be willing to get in on a draw (LAG), if they shove and you have a strong draw hand be wary but willing to get involved if solo and it won't cripple you to lose a race OR you have a good draw, there is one or two other callers and potential to make a hand and THEN bet to get more in from the other players so even if you lose to shorty you win from them. (had one yesterday I lost to shorty with AA and thought I was out the game, but side pot and big stack lost to me so I actually came out the hand AHEAD even though I lost to shorty, I had 2nd best and 3rd best had more chips to give me.)

SO many of the "ducks, elephants, gamblers & ?" are willing to go in with any A, any K, any gapper/connector/suited because of shorty in it and the chance for a bounty! It makes it profitable to go in laggy with any of these at the top ends even to a raise. Because they are going to be in with crap and you will be in with a good draw. If you miss, you can get away if they get to betting stupid.

Look for hi VP, lower pfr and lower af on these types players. The higher the vp and lower the agression pre and post the wider range you can take a risk to see a flop knowing it won't be too expensive to draw later either. Mostly you are going to want to see it all anyway. There is an all in man. Idiots will bet anyway even bluffing, a good player will ONLY bet if they have a good hand and they want more in the pot OR there is a side pot in contention. So you know when they bet what it's going to mean to you post flop.

There are hands you would normally fold, like A9o when someone raises pre, but if shorty is in it or is the one that made the raise, you can be assured others smell blood and will jump in. Use TI to determine the type player they are and you go in too. The difference between you and them is that you have your "net/shield" and that is TI. You can see who they are and get into a pot and win the pot AND get the KO that you ordinarily wouldn't play. You are taking a calculated risk, they are gambling.

Slaktarn takes down Patrick Antonius for 25K PLO Win.

After changing tables immediately from a grueling match with Di Dang (Urindanger) Patrick Antonius sat with another like-minded aggressive online player in slaktarn who eliminated Ugadabugada in but a single hand and had been waiting on the sidelines to see who would join him at the final table.

You got to wonder if the slug-fest patrick just finished with Urindanger, had anything to do with his declining slaktarns offer for a deal as the tournament got underway. Patrick quickly, (but politely) declined to the detriment of his bankroll, as slaktarn went on to oust Patrick in about 90 hands or 40 minutes of play.

Final money finishers for the Full Tilt 25K PLO Championship were:

1- slaktarn                   $560,000
2- Patrick Antonius       $320,000
3- Urindanger               $168,000
4- Ugadabegada            $168,000
5- trex313                      $96,000
6- David Benefield           $96,000
7- SteveSung                   $96,000
8- Erich Kollmann             $96,000

Some first round Full Tilt Pro casualties included Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, Josh Arieh, David Benyamine, Steve Zolotow, Andy Bloch and Erick Lindgren.

This was the final hand of the tournament:

 

Full Tilt Poker Game #7978419029: $25K Heads-Up PLO Champ. (58250407), Table 1 - 25/50 - Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 18:02:35 ET - 2008/09/07

Seat 1: slaktarn (9,705)

Seat 2: Patrik Antonius (2,295)

Patrik Antonius posts the small blind of 25

slaktarn posts the big blind of 50

The button is in seat #2

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Patrik Antonius raises to 150

slaktarn calls 100

*** FLOP *** [Jh 6d 7s]

slaktarn checks

Patrik Antonius has 15 seconds left to act

Patrik Antonius bets 250

slaktarn raises to 1,050

Patrik Antonius raises to 2,145, and is all in

slaktarn calls 1,095

Patrik Antonius shows [Ad Ah Th 9c]

slaktarn shows [Jc Jd 8c Qh]

*** TURN *** [Jh 6d 7s] [9s]

*** RIVER *** [Jh 6d 7s 9s] [5s]

Patrik Antonius shows a pair of Aces

slaktarn shows three of a kind, Jacks

slaktarn wins the pot (4,590) with three of a kind, Jacks

Patrik Antonius stands up

slaktarn stands up

*** SUMMARY ***

Total pot 4,590 | Rake 0

Board: [Jh 6d 7s 9s 5s]

Seat 1: slaktarn (big blind) showed [Jc Jd 8c Qh] and won (4,590) with three of a kind, Jacks

Seat 2: Patrik Antonius (small blind) showed [Ad Ah Th 9c] and lost with a pair of Aces

Mike Matusow Figuring Things Out....finally.

Mike Matusow has turned a corner on Full Tilt, leaning more towards tight aggressive than the loose aggressive that cause so many blow ups in the past. This follows his WSOP bracelet and fine showing in the WSOP main event. Mike has often said before he was playing the best poker of his life, but I think only now that is the case. It is part and parcel with working poker talent with a poker mind so one doesn't control the other and emotions do not control your game.

Mike Matusow has been quite successful as a pro but was prone to huge downswings and monumental blow-ups at critical times. We saw this in cash games as well as in tournaments playing poker online and offline. Sometimes, even a pro has to step back and say, "What is wrong with my game if this keeps happening to me?"

It takes a big man to look at his game, especially at Mikes level and say he still needs to improve. In this video I saw him play virtually error free in this omaha hi-lo game for a couple hours building his stack from $10,000 to more than $30,000 against some rather tough competition. Keep it going Mike.

Patrick Antonius Advances to Final 4 of PLO 25K Championship.

After a grueling heads-up matches with trex313 and Brian Hastings, Patrick Antonius has climbed to the final four of the 25k PLO Championship at Full Tilt Poker, now assured of earning 4th place money of $168,000. As you can well assume, he is now looking at the $560,000 1st place as a realistic outcome.

That won't be easy, as now Antonius will be facing Urindanger, who in fact is trex313's brother in real life!!

The "Urindanger" account is played by Di Dang, and "Trex313" is played by his brother, Hac Dang. Both brothers are extremely talented cash game players, especially heads-up. They are online poker millionaires multiple times over, and are clearly adept at PLO as this field of mostly professionals included competition like Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, Erick Lindgren, Tom Dwan, Scott Fischman, and Omaha specialist Robert WilliamsonIII.

The final four in this event scheduled for Sunday September 6/08 at 4:00PM est also include "slaktarn" and "Ugadabugada".

Low limits at Full Tilt may get a call no matter how weak they are...

Should you call slow or fast? Consistent or mix it up?

I am more hesitant to call with time taken. To me it looks like someone strong pretending to be weak. If you are weak why would you raise?

A quick re-raise to me (again) seems to imply I want to throw money out here, and see if you will fold. So, I guess my answer as answer would be I would be more likely to call a faster bet than a slower 1.

As a general question, this is my general answer, not taking into account any reads I have developed on a given player. However at the $1.00 level at Full Tilt Poker, you could probably re-raise quick or slow, and type in the chat box "I have the nuts" and still get a call. Nothing against smaller stakes games, it just goes back to my theory that bad players lose their money calling, not betting.

There are many more reasons to expect poor play than your opponent simply not understanding. Reasons like, not caring, being too tired, drinking and playing, teenage sillyness..  etc. Its not simply a question of poker odds calculations or strategy. If it were you might be able to figure them out, but I wouldn't bother with it at this level. You never know why your opponent may be making horrendous plays, but the more they make the better. Even if some of those plays work out for them!!

sbrugby aka Brian Townsend

A few days ago, Brian Townsend admitted to using multiple accounts to get an unfair edge in his poker games. Since so many players were used to his style of play under his main accounts: aba20 (PokerStars.com) and Brian Townsend (FullTiltPoker.com), he decided to create 2 new accounts so that nobody would know who he was. Brian has since admitted what he did was wrong in a recent apology posted in his blog. 

Brian wrote: “For the past 6 months I have been playing under the 2nd aliases Stellarnebula on FTP and makersmark66 on PokerStars.  I have not used the aba20 account on Stars since I began playing on the Makersmark66 account.  I have since gone back to using the aba20 account and will play only that account.  During this time I played the 25/50 and 100/200 PLO games.  I played under the Stellarnebula account from February until the end of June at which time Lee Jones and I had a discussion and we came to an agreement that I needed to close it.

During this time I was playing under the Brian Townsend account, never at the same table with the Stellarnebula.  Under the Stellarnebula account I played 25/50, 50/100, and 100/200 Pot Limit Omaha PLO.  During this time I played a very small amount of 50/100 PLO and primarily 200/400 PLO under the Brian Townsend account. I wanted to have come forward and make this public sooner, but unfortunately because of certain business relationships I could not do that.  What I did was wrong and I am going to be punished by FullTilt poker by having my red pro status revoked for 6 months.  I am unsure what action, if any, PokerStars will take.

I have also hurt those that I work closely with primarily at CardRunners but also at FullTilt.  To compensate those that were hurt by my actions I am going to be donating 25,000 dollars to a charity to be determined in the future.  This money will be removed from my CardRunners distributions.  This is by no means me making my actions correct but I hope that it shows some good faith towards those that I work closely with.  I am very proud of CardRunners; we are doing something very special.”

Distressed player at Full Tilt Poker.

A distressed poker player on Full Tilt Poker gets some hard advice in the forum as noted below from JP.

Post: I have watched Marty's Mzone series and own Tournament indicator. I have also read the Bankroll series and tried to follow it (with not much success).

My story is below but my user name on full tilt is ______ - my Sharkscope graph will corroborate the story below.

I mostly played 9 Man SnGs and was a losing player but getting better. One day, I started playing Heads Up and I won alot and my winnings climbed up. So a month ago, I clicked on a $5 heads up match and somehow ended up in a $500 heads up match, I lost it, tilted and lost my whole roll of $750. I really did not intend to play for $500 and was devastated for a couple of hours after that.

After I recovered, I started bankroll building my way back up and got into HU matches again. Now here's the problem...every time I lose, I get this uncontrollable urge to double the stakes and play again. Mostly this happens when I'm in with the best hand and end up taking a bad beat.

Today, I lost my whole roll of $505 after I tilted when I took several bad beats in a row and lost 6 HU matches in a row. So I bought back in for $600 and played a $550 HU game which I somehow won against a guy who had over $65000 profit and is ranked 69 on OPR.

I feel like I can be a solid enough player to stay at $5 games and build from there but I just lose control after a tough loss and double my stakes.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has been through this feeling and how I can stop it so that I don't go crazy after I lose and play these crazy stakes.

___________________________________________________

Response: First off, I say this from the heart and with your best interest in mind...
YOU SUCK!!! 

Seriously though, your story is full of defects. First of all, you have no self control. If you cannot control yourself, you cannot be a solid player at any stakes. You are simply a gambler looking for a rush and hope to get lucky. You are not applying skill, poker math, logic, strategy, etc...

ANYone that has gambled in a casino or played blackjack or roulette hits that point. "I can't possibly keep losing like this, if I double the last bet I'll get it back. I can double my bet a few times as necessary until I hit, then I can back down and start over."

Except that don't work that way. You can get lucky and hit and hit and climb. Like you did with the lucky game for $500 and doubled your br in one game. OR, more likely, you will lose 2 or 3 in a row and never recoup it. It is QUITE conceivable to lose 20 games in a row. Try DOUBLING YOUR BET FROM THE LAST BET EVERY TIME 20 TIMES IN A ROW. Do you own a Rolls Royce? If you did, you MIGHT be able to afford your buy in but would most likely need to sell your car to do so.

You need to STOP NOW! Stand back, regroup, think about it and THEN decide what to do. No playing until you figure it out unless you like giving money away. (If you do like giving it away, you can do a player transfer to me on Full Tilt and save time )

Seriously, take a look at this....
Stop playing for the moment and take some time for introspection and self analysis...

1) Why are you playing poker?  What is the reason and the hoped for goal or results?
2) What can you do to get there at your goal and be there in 1 years time?
3) knowing #2, where do you need to be in 6 months to be halfway to your goal?
4) Knwoing where you need to be in 6 months, where will you need to be in 3 months to get there?
5) Where do you need to be in 6 weeks to be halfway to your 3 month goal?
6) Where do you need to be next month to be half way to your 6 week goal or more?
7) what do you have to do every day to get to your goal for this month?

FIRST you have to figure out where you want to go, if you don't know where you want to go you CAN'T GET THERE!

AFTER you know where you want to go, NOW plan out a map and figure the best way to get there.

I think too, for anyone to give you some really good advice and helpful suggestions, they would need to know where you want to go to help guide you in that direction. To say "How can I stop titlting" is your goal won't work. That is going to be one of the steps on the path to where you want to go.

So my question to you is, why are you playing the game and what do you want from it as your end goal?

Full Tilt is Tough.

CrazyThing has something to say in the FTForums:

I have to agree that FT does not use a random number generator. The losses I've had for a while now cannot be coincidence. If you know anything about poker at all, you know that mathematically you can’t loose over and over with the best hand, especially not to ridiculous beats. Just watch guys like Gus Hansen and Phil Ivey duke it out nightly at the omaha hi-lo tables, but I do not hear them crying bad beats....ever!!!

Don’t get me wrong, I know bad beats (or just simple bad luck) happens, more often than any of us would like. But I play in live tourneys all the time, and I am very good at matching odds… when this site says “tag, you’re it”, you might as well sit back and forget about it because the odds are no longer fair and even. Maybe I believe a little too much in statistics, but nevertheless, they’ve always proven correct for me so I’ll continue.

You have likely got to know when to quit, when to NOT shove it all in, and when you are really ahead or just marginally ahead. Most of the bad beats I see, really aren't that bad.

And statistically, if a player plays every day, plays very well and time after time has the best hand – that same player doesn’t get beat by basically nothing every time they play for weeks at a time. Not randomly anyway! Don’t get me wrong – I’m not speaking as a ‘sore loser’, I play for money that matters against people I can see, not against a computer; but it is still very disheartening to play on here for enjoyment and practice only to have the computer decide it’s not your “turn” to win this month (or however long they keep you “tagged”).

Nothing personal against Full TilT however, I’ve been playing for years, and all of the sites are doing it more and more. But for those of you that may be fairly new at playing online – it wasn’t always like this… that is what is so sad about it!! And it doesn’t bother me if you copy my post into yours so you can call me an idiot or make fun of what I’ve said, I don’t come in here and read these things enough to know it if you do. After all, it is my belief that anyone who actually believes FT, or any online gaming site, is here for you and your enjoyment and not for your money doesn’t have anything to say that I would want to hear.

The Full Tilt RNG

Posted by Mathemagical in the poker forum:

I've been reading through some old threads on the subject of skewing in Full Tilt Poker, and I saw a disturbing mix of solid information and misinformation about random number generation and statistics, so I thought I'd take a moment to address some of the issues raised and correct a few errors.

Why should you listen to me? I have a degree in Pure Mathematics and Computer Science, and one of my primary research interests is number theory, so I know (more or less) what I'm talking about.

I'll start out talking about random number generation in general, and then move on to how it applies to card shuffling algorithms.


1. What is a random number?

When we talk about generating 'random numbers' in a computer, we generally want to generate very large (say, 32- or 64-bit) random numbers. However, from a theoretical standpoint the problem is no different from randomly generating a 0 or 1 -- i.e., a coinflip -- so we'll talk about unbiased coinflips instead of numbers in this section, just until we get a grip of exactly what it is we mean when we talk about 'random numbers.'



What is an 'random coinflip generator,' then? Think of it as a black box (let's call it HAL) that sits idly in the corner of your room until you ask it to perform a coinflip. Then it replies with either 'HEADS' or 'TAILS' and nothing else. HAL will give you a response each and every time you query it, until the end of the time. However, here's the kicker: without opening HAL and looking at its internal states, you cannot predict what its next answer will be based on its previous answers. You may know how it is programmed, and what its thought process is WHEN it is in a certain state (i.e., you may know its algorithm) but you do not know what all of its internal 'variables' are set to at any point in time.

This is a tough criteria to impose on our machine. In reality, we don't have any true random coinflip generators, because given enough processing time we CAN predict what result will be generated. However, it would take roughly the lifespan of the universe to break our best random coinflip generators, so we still say its results are "impossible" to predict without knowing its internal states.


2. Can HAL output "HEADS" ten times in a row? A thousand?

Yes! Think about what would happen if it were impossible for HAL to answer "HEADS" ten times in a row. Then if it ever answered "HEADS" nine times in a row (which is bound to happen even with a physical coin, eventually) then you would know that its next answer has to be "TAILS", which means you've predicted HAL's next answer without looking at its internal states. This is a no-no, if HAL really is a random coinflip generator.


3. After a thousand answers, is HAL guaranteed to have given 'close to' 500 TAILS replies and 'close to' 500 HEADS replies?

No. Again, see above. If we knew that HAL would output roughly 500 TAILS and 500 HEADS, perhaps with some allowed error, then again we'd be able to predict to some certainty what its outputs would be as we get close to its thousandth answer.

(Here's the rub: if, over a large enough sample size, we CONSISTENTLY observe that a machine is answering TAILS 51% of the time and HEADS 49% of the time, then we can become reasonably certain that this machine is not truly a random coinflip generator.)


4. Is Full Tilt Poker's random number generation biased?

According to the email quoted in BBB's thread, Full Tilt Poker uses three, independent random number generators and combines their results to create a 32-bit random number.

Using XOR to combine the three numbers simply ensures that an attacker (or bored mathematician) would need to break all three generators in order to predict the next number to pop out of the machine. There's not much more to be said about this.

So, what about the three methods themselves?

i) ISAAC

The ISAAC method is very fast, well-known, and relatively well-researched RNG.

It is known to be imperfect: if you initialize ISAAC with certain starting states, it will provide biased outputs. However, this flaw has been known for several years and it is quite rare to begin with, so I'm willing to bet that it is taken into consideration.

ii) OpenSSL

OpenSSL has been around for over a decade and is incredibly well-researched. Used properly, it is incredibly secure, and its random number generators are the basis for much of your privacy online. In short, literally thousands of mathematicians and computer scientists have an interest in its reliability, and any significant flaws have gone over all of their heads.

If there's a weakness in Full-Tilt's RNG, it doesn't lie here.

iii) Hardware RNG

Implemented properly, the output from one of these things is truly random. Wikipedia has a decent article on how they work. I can't say much else about this, since Full-Tilt didn't disclose exactly what kind of RNG they use.

The beauty of XORing the three results together is that ALL THREE methods need to be biased in order for a bias to show in the result. The chances of this seem slim.


5. But how do we KNOW?

Here's the thing: a biased RNG is easy to detect. There are several algorithms for testing RNGs and determining, to any desired degree of accuracy, whether or not their outputs are unbiased. These tests aren't arbitrary. They work and are mathematically sound.

The question is whether Full-Tilt tests its RNG results, and to what accuracy. That's obviously something I don't know.


6. Is Full Tilt Poker's card shuffling skewed?

Okay... let's say we have a reliable, unbiased RNG and wish to use it for shuffling a virtual deck of cards.

There are two, classic algorithms for doing so, both of which produce a random shuffling as long as the underlying RNG is unbiased:

i) The simplest way is to assign every card in the deck a random number, and sort the cards based on their assigned numbers. This method is simple, but not particularly efficient, as sorting lists of numbers isn't particularly quick.

ii) A more efficient method is to move through the deck one card at a time, and swap each card with a random card from the remainder of the deck.

The problem with the second method is that it is very easy to screw up by an amateur programmer. It requires a fair bit of care to avoid errors that make the shuffling biased. However, if you're a multi-million dollar company and can afford to hire competent programmers, you'll probably do so. But who knows.

If Full-Tilt's card shuffling is indeed skewed (which I think is unlikely), I wouldn't be surprised if the error is here. However, it is at best unclear and at worst impossible (I suspect the latter) for such a skewing to consistently give underdogs an edge in poker games, so it seems irrelevant to the discussion.


7. Are decks skewed to fit 'typical' distributions?

JP says the following:

   

Quote:

For algorithms to run, it's mathematical, poker deal is "fixed" based on the program to deal specific "typical" statistical averages over time. The program knows what it's dealt and what should be dealt. How it evolves from that I don't have a clue. Perhaps the program picked out that its deal was missing some statistic point, switched to maintain "XY" cards in "X" hands dealt. Once point reached, it went to it's normal "routine".

This should ABSOLUTELY NEVER BE DONE and NEVER would be in a setting like this. EVER. If any one mathematician of the dozens surely employed by Full-Tilt did this, they would be fired on the spot. Skewing random results to make them look more 'typical' is incredibly dangerous to any random number generator, as it actually GIVES AWAY information about the results. (See questions 2 and 3.)

There is a story in Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson about how during World War II, middle-aged women in top secret facilities would pick out lotto balls from a chamber, day-in-day-out, in order to generate the random keys the Allies to use to encrypt their transmissions. Often, the ladies would notice what seemed to be anomalies: they'd pick out a Q or an X 'more often than they should' and would put back 'unlikely' letters like these that seemed to appear too often.

The Germans realized this, and were able to crack the Allies' transmissions, using the knowledge that certain letters in the encryption keys would always appear at a certain frequency.


8. What possibility are we left with?

The only remaining possibility is that Full-Tilt deals fixed decks on purpose, and reshuffles them during a hand, to let the n00bs suck out on you. But why would they? Why risk such massive lawsuits to skew the game in certain players' favour? If you have a theory, feel free to let me know. I can't think of one.


8. Any conclusions?

Not really. I just hope this was informative to someone, and helped to clear up some misconceptions about this subject.

Super Turbos at Full Tilt Poker

Yeah, that was the one where I had him so short he was "clear" M zone? I called his shove-allin (more like stumble-in) with 74o and paired the 7 I think to win.

If you want some short stack Hi-blind red M-zone end game practice, I recommend the SUPER-turbos at Full Tilt! Fast blinds like 3 minute levels, you AND everyone starts shortstack 300 chips. The games are $3.50+.30 and is expensive on the br. But they are good to practice if you have an extra $100 to invest in training. I advise watching them first. Consider it hands on school of hard knocks. Suckouts abound, all in shoves are the norm, Stack play is crucial, watching M and stacks and paying attention to who is doing what with what. so you avoid being the one on the bubble to be forced in you watch your plays and time things attacking some opponents for the steal and avoiding others.

This is NOT a game to play to build anything and NOT a game to play for anything other than "FUN" or "TRAINING" for this style LAG/Bully/Steal/End-game Shortstack play. This is WAY better than HU game for end game practice! but only do it with "extra funds" you put in to "train with" as it will destroy your br and plan on losing because while it takes a LOT of skill to cash in these, it also takes a LOT of LUCK. Skill is when, who and how much with what, Luck determines if that correct choice will be allowed to succeed.

It also helped taking a break from FT and going to another site, just playing my usual TAG game. Coming back, either it gave time for the cards to run their course or the idiots that got my money earlier lost it to others and left the site.