[ba-poker] Quantification of skill edge in tournaments

[William Chen <wchen_8369(deleted the rest)>]

This is a response to Fossil's last post that Crunch
should have a big edge over a maniac who will not back
down to a raise unless he has very little.  

I like Crunch's metric of using "skill edge" as a
multiplier to each player's chips.  I more or less
agree with Crunch's original estimate of 10-15% or so
as an edge over a predictable maniac.

Here area couple of data points.  At the beginning of
a Bay Area tournament with ~100 players and 20-30
minute rounds, it's possible to have an edge of 100%
or more than the average player in the field.  Data
from some other players also seem to corroborate this.
  

Conversely at the beginning of a single table NL
tourney whee the limits go up every 10 hands, my edge
seems to be around 30%, max.  That is the money is
equivalent to me finishing in each of the paid places
1.3 times more frequent than average.  I'm fairly
confident of this number (std deviation = 5%).  Real
data from several other good players also suggest that
this might be the limit for the $200 EF level.  

[Of course I hear anecdotal evidence that "I finish in
the money 70% of the time" etc.  Well for one if they
were true you really *should* quit your day job--you
could play 3-4 of these $200 single tables, they take
at most an hour each, it'd be nice to win $500/hr. 
But let's say I don't see anyone in those games
finishing more than 50% of the time, and overall I'm
pretty skeptical of those claims.]

But the thing is once you are at the stage where there
is 18K in the pot on each round, with you only having
130K as one of the tall stacks, you don't have much
edge against someone who will push chips in liberally
and be loath to fold when you raise (as you guys
characterized him). Frankly, your edge lies mostly in
picking up something like 66 and getting your
opponnent to shove in with a substandarh hand like J2.
Getting to pick up 66 here *is* a big part of your 15%
equity edge, and Crunch was right in taking it.    

Bill