We have a new type of contest this time around! @Maya submitted this question and we’d love to hear your thoughts on which of these players you think you’re most likely to win against when playing heads up.
The catch? The author has a correct answer in mind! But you don’t need to get it “right” to have a chance to win. Five random participants will be drawn as winners on Thursday, April 18th, and each will receive 100,000 chips! I’ll reveal Maya’s answer then.
There’s no way to answer that. You don’t have enough information, none of this tells you how good they are. How many years they’ve been playing doesn’t tell you how many hands they’ve played, how many games they’ve won, or the quality of the opponents they’ve faced.
Rank doesn’t correlate to skill, either. Did they buy their rank, or did they earn it?
For free chips, I’ll play against anyone. Why not? We’ll see who wins. But winning one time doesn’t tell you much, either. Can I win consistently, more than 50% against them? Will I figure them out over time and improve my win rate? Will they figure me out?
B, Jessica.
Jessica’s low rank, however she came by it, would give me a sense of confidence, whether real or imagined, that I believe is essential to play my best game. However, for play money, I’d take any of them on. That’s all the information I need.
I am going to approach the contest on the basis that these players all play the same tournaments that I do, therefore they are all MTT tournaments and not a sit and go heads up table. I am also going to use poetic licence and assume I know these players quite well, and have met them several times before.
Ben is a nice chap, have played lots of MTT tournaments value around 50k with him and he is a hard player to read and to push into a mistake. 2 - 1 chance against him in heads up.
Dan is very highly ranked considering the short time he has been here. I am pretty sure he has provided the salary for most of the staff with his chip purchases and he mostly plays high stakes ring tables. Meeting him on the odd occasion in a 250k tournament he has not had a lot of patience and relies on all in bets in heads up. 5 - 1 chance.
Jessica is lovely, does not get to play very often and always in the freeroll tournaments. However, she is very careful and tends to slow play in heads up and folds to any significant raise. 5 - 1 chance
Emily is a player for all to fear. She has built up her bank roll by careful and consistant play and I have greatest respect for her. Realistically my chances against her would be very slim indeed. 1 - 2 chance.
To sum up, I would stand the best chance against either Jessica or Dan, and would probably choose Dan as I would have more satisfaction in beating him!*
Choice C: Dan. Either this is Doyle or Phil, in which case I’ll lose quickly, or it’s someone with lots of resources and no patience–a bingo player, in other words. Since I do have patience, I’ll await the right opportunity and take his chips, though this may take a while.
You can’t get this information anywhere else either Puggy. (How many games they’ve one and the quality of the opponents they’ve faced…).
You work with what you’ve got. Rank and how long they’ve been playing is what’s available on Replay, so let’s use it to decide.
Right, you can’t get it anywhere else. But I still don’t know enough, so I still can’t say. All things being equal, when I see someone who has a rank below about 12,000, I just tell myself they might be pretty good, and if I see someone in the single thousands, I usually give them credit for being good until I see reason to believe otherwise. Players with a rank in the hundreds, I assume are very good, and/or have been playing here for a very long time.
I don’t think about it anymore than that. I think about the cards, pot odds, implied odds, position, stack sizes, and a bunch of other things. Very often when I’m in a tournament, I’ll hover around and see players with a rank in the low thousands holding the small stack. Sometimes they’re still dangerous, but I don’t worry too much about them until their stack grows enough to be more of a threat. I’ll give them some more credit when they decide to get in a hand, but that’s about it.
I feel I can play against anyone on this site that I’ve played against so far. Some are a lot better than others, and I might not beat everyone regularly, but I relish those battles because they challenge me to become a better player.
You’re right of course puggy. But in the context of this contest, you have been given the choice to play against one of these 4 players, and all you know about them is the information given, nothing more. Which one do you think you are more likely to beat than the others. Simple
Well the obvious pick is Jessica. But she might be so green that she won’t know when to fold, which could be disastrous when I bet a paired flop in order to get her to fold, she calls with terrible pot odds, and then hits a draw anyway.
I’d have to assume Dan just bought a bunch of chips, because I don’t see someone coming in from whatever they give you these days for your signup bonus to making the top 50 in 3 months. So he’d be my next “sure thing”.
Ben’s been playing longer than I have, yet only ranks slightly higher (although his bankroll could be way bigger than me, it seems like it goes exponential the closer to the #1 rank you get.) Probably I can take him, but he might give me trouble. I’d like to play him.
Emily, I’d assume is very good, and I’d like play her as well, but I don’t know if I’d expect to win – probably not, but I’d be pleased with myself if I did. It’d be a good game though.
my guess would be JESSICA,shes played for 7 years a ranks over 900,000. Although my guess is also she is probably a bingo player an those are the worst kind to play.Thats my choice between the 4
This is a hard one, but my choice is Ben (A). Ben and Emily are probably good players, but that means their actions will be more predictable and I’ll have a better idea when I am ahead or beat. Emily might be too good for me to beat though, so I’ll chose Ben. Dan and Jessica are the 2 most obvious picks, but are most likely bingo players. I’m assuming Dan’s rank is high because he bought chips, and Jessica can’t seem to hold onto her chips. I figure I have a better chance against someone who actually plays poker, rather than someone who is unpredictable and likely going in on most hands.
None of them… Like really, I mean it. I am a terribly bad at this poker nonsense. I don’t even know the rules and all anyone gotta do is come take my stash(is that what its called).
But if I did know the rules I might think…
One thing for sure,I would hope to avoid Dan. He is either very good and capable of smashing me or every hand would be a life or death bingofest roller-coaster.
Of the other 3.
Ben is a nit. He still has all&only his free chips so is risk adverse and only plays nuts. 3blind raises will slowly chew him up
Jessica is a friend. She plays for chat’n’giggles and if I accidentally took her chips I would feel Sooooo bad and try to lose them back right away.
Emily is a leaderboard hog. She plays 12-15 hours a day in every possible league and stalls/time wastes to allow others to crash out so she can advance. Heads-up, Boring, but easy.
In conclusion, Ben or Emile
such a bad rank and playing over 7 years means that in all this time she never improved. usually playing for a long time means getting better at the game, but since she still can’t win even after all this time means she barely or probably even did’nt improve at all
At the risk of being annoying and sounding a bit pretentious: To go about this the right way, I would put time and effort into my decision. I would investigate their profiles. You normally have access to some of the hands they’ve played. I would review the hands that they’ve played and attempt to form a somewhat educated decision based off what I observed in their playing. I would watch their play from the rail. I would keep notes on them based on what I’ve observed. I would ask trusted, reliable sources (friends and other players) if they have an opinion on these players’ games through experience and/or observation.
If this is not an option and I have to make my decision based solely on the information provided in the question, I would try to analyze and evaluate what each description means to me and try not to make any quick assumptions. I did this in a separate Word Document, and came to the conclusion that choosing A. Ben as my opponent would, in my personal opinion, likely give me the best chance at success.
