AboutI want to play in better structured poker tournaments. To accomplish this for myself, I developed a formula (Math Section) which assigns a numeric score to a poker tournament structure. I plug in a few pieces of data from a structure sheet, it spits out a number, I compare numbers and play in the tournament with the highest one. Now, I'm hoping that if I provide that formula to everyone and we all use it in deciding which tournaments to play, then casinos would be forced to offer better structures to compete for players. I've seen other people attempt this, but their calculations involve more data than necessary (often involving every piece of data from 18 levels of poker) and weren't able to distill down a structure to one simple score (Patience Level/Skill Level). I think my formula is both simpler to use and produces a result simpler to understand, while just as comprehensive. For lack of a better term, I'm calling the result of this formula S-Points (structure points). To generate a tournament's S-Points you plug in data about the three variables of that tournament's structure:
If 2 out of 3 of those variables were equal between structures, comparing the differences in that 3rd variable would let you know which one was better: All else equal, $12,500 starting chips are better than $10,000; All else equal, 40 minute levels are better than 30; All else equal, A 6th level of 250-500 is better than 300-600. But all else is never equal. A larger starting stack can be negated by skipping levels. 10% more time at each level isn't that great if the blinds/antes are increasing 25% more each level. All those variables need to be taken into account when comparing structures and S-Points allow you to do that. From a high level perspective, S-Points puts the Starting Stack Size and Level Lengths into a relationship with the Antes/Blinds that produces a larger number for better structured tournaments.
My advice is to gather the structure sheets of a few tournaments you are familiar with and run them through the S-Points Calculator. Pick a bad one, a good one and then one your unsure of to see how they all stack up against each other. You can go to the S-Points Calculator and jump right in or feel free to check out the math below to verify the methodology makes sense. Quit taking casinos words' for it and start verifying that structures are in fact good.
MathS-Points = [Starting Stack Minutes]/([Level 10 Orbit Cost]/[Level 6 Orbit Cost] + [Level 14 Orbit Cost]/[Level 10 Orbit Cost] + [Level 18 Orbit Cost]/[Level 14 Orbit Cost]) Its probably best to walk through the S-Points Calculator with the Example Structure one time so that you can fully understand the variables and terms. The S-Points formula relies heavily on a sub-calculation I call [Orbit Cost]. An [Orbit Cost] is the sum of the blinds plus the antes for an orbit of the button at a level: [Orbit Cost] = [Small Blind] + [Big Blind] + [Big Blind Ante] If a tournament has a Level 6 with a 150 Small Blind, 300 Big Blind and 300 Big Blind Ante; that would give a [Level 6 Orbit Cost] of 750. Once you understand [Orbit Cost], the S-Points formula becomes pretty straight forward. Four of the five values in the formula are [Orbit Costs] and the 5th, [Starting Stack Minutes], is indirectly based on an [Orbit Cost]. [Starting Stack Minutes] is the amount of time you can play in the tournament before an [Orbit Cost] exceeds the starting stack of that tournament. Suppose all levels in a tournament are 30 minutes, you start with 15,000, its [Level 16 Orbit Cost] is 11,000 and its [Level 17 Orbit Cost] is 19,000. In that tournament you can play through 16 levels before an orbit of the button costs more than your starting stack. So, its [Starting Stack Minutes] is 480 (16 * 30). From a top level perspective, its simple division. S-Points puts the relative amount of chips you get into a relationship with the rate of change in antes/blinds among levels. As the numerator gets bigger (i.e. larger Starting Stack and/or longer Level Length) or the denominator gets smaller (i.e. smaller increases in Antes/Blinds between levels) the formula results in more S-Points and a better structure. You can email me (jason@rainbowspuppiessunshine.com) if you have any questions or want to discuss the formula/methodology. |