“‘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.’”

I think it’s particularly funny that the article doesn’t in any way explain Sklansky’s involvement with poker, so I’m sure that quote comes across as bizarre to those who don’t know who he is.

Based on his forum posts, Sklansky seems to be taking it remarkably well, though in characteristically oddball fashion:

“I have no personal animosity toward these guys. They used the absolute lowest level of force necessary to accomplish their purposes. In one of my books I wrote that there is not enough difference in the punishment of criminals who harm victims and those who don’t, using Steve Wynn’s daughter’s kidnapping as an example. I’m not going to change my mind just because I am now one of those victims. In this case I doubt they will be caught anyway since I never saw them and they let the other person in the house sleep through it!

Meanwhile if this is being read by the robbers or someone who knows them I would request that they mail me those few things (photos, etc) that are of no value to them but are to me.”

Early reports indicate that the parrot is unharmed.

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.

The countervailing principle is that chips are worth more in the hands of a skilled player than an unskilled player. This is because better players will have the opportunity to use those chips to win more chips. They contain within them the player’s expected value for the tournament. In FTOPS Event 4, the first 2000 chips, which cost $300, were probably worth $750 or so to the best player in the field. Conversely, they were probably worth about $50 to the worst player.

You can see that at this rate, it is clearly correct for the best players to rebuy immediately in a tournament that allows unlimited rebuys. Even though his second $300 buys him less than his first expenditure, it still buys him more than $300 worth of value. Conversely, it is incorrect for the worst players to rebuy. In fact, it is incorrect for them to play at all.

When only a single rebuy is permitted, this could at least theoretically change. If a skilled player uses his rebuy immediately to double his starting stack, he risks losing all 4000 of his chips at once. Although his rebuy was a good investment, he missed out on the opportunity to make an even better investment in a second tournament life. Remember, going from 0 to 2000 is worth more than going from 2000 to 4000. By opting for the latter, the player cost himself the chance to do the former a second time.

However, this must be balanced against the risk of immediately getting over 2000 chips, remaining there for the entire rebuy period, and thus losing the opportunity, to invest that second $300 at all.

The one other thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that it matters how many chips the other players at your table have and how good they are. A player cannot realize the extra value that his skill imparts to his 4000 chip stack if no one else at the table has more than 2000. If several bad players to his right all rebought immediately, then the good player should do so as well, so that he will have the opportunity to invest his additional 2000 chips well against those weak players. If several very good players to his immediate left rebought to 4000, the same player might be better off saving his rebuy as an insurance policy against elimination. Otherwise, he risks playing larger pots out of position against very good players- a scenario where those additional chips would not be invested well. If the first hour is drawing to a close and his stack is below 2000, he can always take his second rebuy then.

Unlike an unlimited rebuy tournament, where it generally makes sense to push any edge during the rebuy period since survival is never at risk, this structure makes survival during the first hour particularly important. This is because the player will have the opportunity at the end of the first hour to buy chips at a discount. $300 will buy him, not 2000 chips, as with the rebuys, but 2500 chips for an add-on. It is pretty much always profitable for a good player to add-on, and if he is eliminated in the first hour, he won’t have a chance to take this good investment.

I include this exegesis on rebuy tournament theory because I have nothing interesting to say about the tournament itself. No one at my table rebought immediately, so I didn’t either. I lost my first 2000 chips with two pair in a limped pot at the 10/20 level. My opponent seemed like a fish, so I thought he would call me down with worse, but he ended up having a better two pair. Then I rebought, added on, lasted for about an hour more despite missing tons of flops, shoved over a very weak limper with K7s, and got called by one of the blinds who had AK.

I’m not all that good at PLO, but I do want to learn, and I’m sure it will be a weak field, so I’ll probably play today’s 2:00 $500 PLO 6-Max. I’ll be playing the Stars $300 anyway. Then at 4:30 there’s a $100 rebuy FTOPS that I’ll play if I’m not sick of poker by then.