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Recently I have wondered if it is possible to calculate the
probability of winning a poker tournament based on which strategy you
use and how your all in moves are distributed. During the process of
collecting data to solve this problem I have run into some interesting
observations which I would like to share with you.
Check out the previous post in this series: Online poker tournament statistics: player exit percentage
Having discovered a relationship between player exit percentage and
the time any given tournament has been running for, the next step in
calculating the probability of winning a poker tournament was to
estimate the cumulative amount of blinds payed for any given period of
time a poker tournament has been running for.
Just to remind you, the calculations shown below are based on the
blind structure of FTP (Full Tilt Poker) regular tournaments with 10
minute blind levels (I’ve only included the first 10 levels )
| Level |
Small Blind |
Big Blind |
Ante |
Blinds pr. level |
Tournament duration [min] |
| 1 |
15 |
30 |
0 |
50 |
10 |
| 2 |
20 |
40 |
0 |
67 |
20 |
| 3 |
25 |
50 |
0 |
83 |
30 |
| 4 |
30 |
60 |
0 |
100 |
40 |
| 5 |
40 |
80 |
0 |
133 |
50 |
| 6 |
50 |
100 |
0 |
167 |
60 |
| Break |
- |
- |
- |
- |
65 |
| 7 |
60 |
120 |
0 |
200 |
75 |
| 8 |
80 |
160 |
0 |
267 |
85 |
| 9 |
100 |
200 |
0 |
333 |
95 |
| 10 |
120 |
240 |
25 |
650 |
105 |
In order to calculate the amount of blinds payed pr. level shown in
the table above, I estimated a total of 10 rounds played pr. level.
Because FTP tables are 9 handed the assumption of 10 rounds pr. level
means that on average a player will pay the blinds a little more than
once pr. level; 1,11 times to be exact.
Summing the “Blinds pr. level” over the “Tournament duration” up to blind level 34 led to the following table:
| Tournament duration [hours] |
Total Blinds paid |
Total Blinds + starting stack (1500) |
Successive all in wins needed to pay blinds |
| 1 |
800 |
2300 |
1 (0,62) |
| 2 |
4000 |
5500 |
2 (1,85) |
| 3 |
16000 |
17500 |
4 (3,52) |
| 4 |
68000 |
69500 |
6 (5,54) |
| 5 |
217000 |
218500 |
7 (7,18) |
| 6 |
866000 |
867500 |
9 (9,17) |
I myself was quite amazed when I saw these numbers. 866000 chips
payed in total blinds for a 6 hour tournament. That’s a lot of chips!!!!
To have some sort of reference I wanted to calculate how many
successive all ins you would need to win to pay these blinds. To keep
things as simple as possible I assumed that each all in would double
the 1500 chip starting stack. According to this assumption, 2
successive all in wins increase your stack from 1500 to 6000, 3
successive all inn wins from 1500 to 12000 and so on.
The rounded necessary all in wins are shown in the table above (the
precice numbers in brackets). Luckily it only takes roughly 9
successive all ins to win 866000 chips….aren’t you relieved:-)
I am now ready to calculate the probability of winning an online
poker tournament, but you will have to wait until my next article to
find out what it is.
You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.
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