Posts Tagged ‘David Sklansky’

Legendary 2+2 poker author David Sklansky was recently the victim of a home invasion robbery committed by what appeared to be several armed individuals. According to the local NBC affiliate,

“‘The guy burst into the bedroom, it was dark but I did see what appeared to be a gun,’” home invasion victim David Sklansky recalls.

Sklansky was asleep in his bedroom when two men broke into his home near Wigwam and Bermuda shortly after 3 am Thursday morning.”

Thankfully, no one was hurt. Sklansky’s cool-headed (some might say robotic) personality surely helped in that regard:

“‘During the time he was there, my main focus was to make sure that he didn’t think that I was panicking or that I would do something silly,’” Sklansky explains. “‘The advice is the same as in a poker game; you try and figure out what the other guy is thinking and then act accordingly. I can imagine if he was doing this same robbery with someone who didn’t’ behave the way I did it could have turned out terribly.’”  Read the complete post...

Event 4 was a $300 NLHE tournament that allowed one $300 rebuy and one $3000 add-on. The initial $300 bought 2000 chips, the rebuy bought 2000 chips anytime during the first hour that you had 2000 chips or fewer, and the add-on bought $2500 chips at the end of first hour.

There are two seminal books that address the value of tournament chips: David Sklansky’s Tournament Poker for Advanced Players and Mason Malmuth’s Gambling Theory and Other Topics. I haven’t read Malmuth’s book, but my understanding is that both make a similar argument that this value is non-linear. Another words, your last chip is worth more than your second to last chip is worth more than your third to last chip etc. Each chip you add to your stack increases the value of your stack, but by less than the preceeding chip did. So if you have on chip worth x, and you double up, your stack is worth marginally less than 2x. And if you double again, your stack will not be worth 4x. This is because survival has value in a tournament where all of the prize pool is not paid to the winner.  Read the complete post...