I'd flip the coin

A new week of the PokerStars Big Game has finally begun. I'm watching the first episode now (available here).

David "Viffer" Peat is sitting to the left of this week's "loose cannon," Troy Howard, and makes him an interesting offer: When they are in the blinds, if the action folds around to just them, he would match Howard's all-in, assuming that neither of them looked at his cards.*

Would you take him up on that offer if you were the loose cannon? I would.

Here's how I'd see it. I'm probably -EV overall playing against this bunch, which includes Barry Greenstein, Antonio Esfandiari, and Chau Giang. It is surely less than 50% that I will come out winner by playing straight. Doubling my money in the prescribed 150 hands is highly unlikely. For either goal--ending up in the black, or ending up at or close to double my starting stake--I am more likely to achieve it by a 50/50 shot than I am by playing the game as intended.

Furthermore, I would know that I was likely to have to take worse odds than that later on. That is because the staked player gets to keep only what he wins above the initial $100,000 that they give him to play with. That means any player who is even a little below his starting stack when the last few hands come up is going to have to force the action with huge bets, no matter how lousy his cards are. A 50/50 shot is better than trying to win in that situation.

There is also the overlay to consider. Specifically, whichever loose cannon at the end of the season has the highest total win gets an additional $50,000 in tournament entries from PokerStars. The benchmark so far is a $63,000 win. Being at or close to a $100,000 win would be very difficult for anybody else to beat. If I won the flip, I would just fold every single hand for the rest of the week, making for extremely boring television, but maximizing my chance to hold on to the profit. The blinds are $200/$400 with a $100 ante (six-handed), so 150 hands would cost about $30,000, still leaving me with a $70,000 profit--enough to be in the lead for the $50K bonus, and likely a difficult mark for any subsequent loose cannon to beat.

The show's producers would probably hate me, but too bad. I would be in it for the money, and I would judge this gambit to be my best shot at having any profit, as well as my best shot for having the season's highest profit, so I would take it in a heartbeat, and let them curse and moan over my fold-every-hand-thereafter strategy.

So did Howard do it? Nope. On the second orbit, the opportunity arose--folded around to Howard and Peat in the blinds. Howard chickened out. He had J-7 and would have been up against Viffer's K-Q. They played to the flop, and Howard hit a 7 (A-9-7), but folded to a bet anyway. He most likely would have won his crapshoot if he had had the nerve to go for it.

Too bad.

It would be interesting to ask him to explain why he turned down the offer. Just afraid to gamble? Or does he seriously think his chance of profiting 175 big blinds or more in 150 hands is better than 50/50? My guess is he just didn't think through the math of his situation--which, if I'm right, all by itself shows that he is probably not a player of a caliber that is going to fare well. (I'm only halfway through the first episode, so haven't seen him play many hands, but my radar says that he is not very good at all--something akin to the first week's contestant, but much less skilled than the second and third weeks' players.)


*Technically, they couldn't quite do it all-in in the dark, because the game is structured to be pot-limit before the flop and no-limit after the flop. But assuming both players are honorable and will stick to their word, they could just limp in, then go all-in on the flop without looking at their hole cards. Same outcome.