odds/insurance -- More HSP stuff
Last night's show had Phill Hellmuth taking insurance on a hand and I was astounded that no one could do a quick math calcuation -- odds of 8 outs hitting by the river without the board pairing.
Only Jamie Gold (holy cow) could provide a quick calculation which was quite off.
Do you guys think this was just the newb giving out information when no one really wanted to help Hellmuth?
Cheers
Magi
Only Jamie Gold (holy cow) could provide a quick calculation which was quite off.
Do you guys think this was just the newb giving out information when no one really wanted to help Hellmuth?
Cheers
Magi
Comments
Even a dead-easy rough way of doing it would have been closer than 2:1, like:
2% for each out = 16%
X2 accounting for both turn and river = 32%
minus 5% or so to account for the board pairing = 27%
Ridonkulous. Bottom line: I think a few of the pros knew but weren't telling (Negreanu) but I also think that more than a few of them couldn't put it within 5% (Gold, and apparently Hellmuth).
HSP = best poker show on TV, and Gabe Kaplan = best poker commentator on TV. I have to admit that in all the poker playing I've done, and all of the televised poker I've watched, I've never heard of the insurance thing before this episode. I thought it was very cool... Eli getting in on the action.
For Eli if it is really 3 to 1 and he is offering 2 to 1, it is in his best interest to go for this deal. (In the long run he makes money), now if it was wrong the other way (4 to1) I'm sure Eli would be telling the players the correct odds there.
I think Berry Greenstein talks about insurance in his book saying be careful of the odds the person that is offering insurance is giving you, because he is most likely putting the numbers in his favor.
I think he's crazy like a fox. In that one hand, he kept saying--in an almost apologetic way--"I have a monster hand. A monster hand. I'll show you, I'll show you... It's a monster.". What he had was middle pair, no kicker, a flush draw and a gutshot straight draw (I think) with one card to come. He had a monster draw, maybe, but he was behind, he knew he was behind, and he got his opponent to lay down the best hand in a big pot.
When he did have to show the J8 (I think) and people called him on it, he said with complete sincerity: "What's the problem? For me, that's a monster hand...". It was either Sammy or Eli who called him on it, saying "yeah yeah, I had you beat, he had you beat too, you knew that... Be quiet and stack the chips.". Or something like that.
In short, I think he does an excellent job of talking his opponents into behaving as he wants them to behave, and this is a valuable skill to have at the poker table. It's the hands that he's not talking his way through that he needs to work on.
I think his comment on the 'monster' hand was that the pro's at the end of the table (Sammy?) agreed with him. They did but I really think they were joking. In my view, he actually believed he had a monster hand, when he was really somewhere in the neighbourhood of 25-30% to win the hand. Lucky for him, his opponent, although having top pair, did not have a hand he wanted to go to war with.
As far as insurance goes, no one is going to offer a better price than what the cards offer. That would be poor business practice. The guy offering insurance knows his stuff and is in it to make money so of course he is going to offer odds much worse. I would have to think a guy asking for insurance is scared money. More than anything else, I think BG said insurance was a pain in the ass because it slowed the game down.
getting insurance is dumb, you are just losing money in the long run..
What's interesting is that his antics truly frustrate his opponents which is his plan and consequently he is not well liked by the public, but consider that his approach is by FAR a lot more in the spirit of the game then that idiot who screams about his sharks/charks or that other guy this year at the WSOP who does his bulldozer dance every hand he wins. When Jamie Gold wins a big hand he may do a clap but he is professional about it, same when he loses a hand.
I suspect the confusion around his partnerships last year were overblown. Strange things can happen when the unexpected happen (I realized this when I casually finished the Stars monthly VIP tournament for a friend who had to leave early on and played 5-6 hours and won over $10,000 - oops ). Winning $12,000,000 certainly would be a much bigger example, and I would not be surprised if Gold worked it out so everyone did fine in the end.
I think he is socially awkward in a not so bad way at times, and his talking methods only work at certain times (large stack) against opponents who are not aware of his antics, so his results likely will suffer from the exposure he received. Then again $6 million offsets that a bit :O.
He certainly does not have the decent personality or skill of Raymer or the inherent charisma of Moneymaker (right person at right place at right time with right name), but he seems quite a bit less of an innate jerk then that Aussie guy at the table.
Regarding the insurance, this years WSOP coverage also had one episode where that was shown a lot with Phil Ivy giving insurance to Hellmuth over and over with stupid odds for Hellmuth (who was doing it I suspect partially for the attention aspect anyways).