[Jeebs]

To understand a live horse racing contest, it helps to have experience with poker tournaments. In casinos and online, Texas Hold’em is still the preferred game of choice. While there are other variations of poker out there, this particular variation is contested on a cash game level (playing for profit) and a tournament level (all players given x number of chips at a specified buy-in, only top x players cash, with the prize pool top heavy at say the top 4-5 players).

Whereas in a live cash game of poker, players are best served playing “premium” starting hands (ie a pair of Aces, Ace-King suited, pair of Kings, etc) with +EV and avoiding the junk, tournament poker is different. Why so? Because unlike a cash game, the blinds (forced bets in an early position post flop) in a tournament increase after a certain amount of time (usually every 15-20 minutes in a casino, although there are formats that can go as long as 2 hours!) At a certain point, a forced bet known as an ante is put into play for all players on all hands. Because the price of playing poker increases every so often, waiting for only premium hands to play is not an optimal strategy for increasing your tournament chip stack. In fact, if you play your cards too tight, it is possible for the blinds and antes to consume your tournament chip stack!

Since blinds increase after a finite period passes, the name of the game at the onset is building the tournament chip stack. While conservative play early on is OK, survival at the tournament table eventually requires one to open up their playable range of starting hands. These stages where the range of hands expand to adjust to the conditions of the tournament are known as “inflection points”. To accumulate chips, you need to be involved in lots of pots - and win a decent majority of them! Otherwise, you risk getting to a certain point in the tournament where your stack is short, and your hand range is at its max. In other words, waiting for premium, optimal opportunities is out the window at this point. Where earlier, you might not consider playing a hand like Ace-Deuce, that same hand late when the blinds and antes are eating you alive might look like gold. Are you likely a longshot? Definitely. However, if the perfect storm hits (multiple callers, favorable board post-flop), your Hail Mary throw may reach the end zone and bring you back in the game, ready to make a run!

So you’re probably wondering: what the heck does this have to do with racing contests? It has a lot to do with it! I’ll leave this here for discussion/questions/digestion and I’ll go into deeper thought another time!