Tournament Poker Is Fine Like It Is

If you play much poker, you might be familiar with Mike Caro. If your familiar with Make Caro, you probably know he hates tournament payout structures. You can read his opinions at http://www.pokerpages.com/articles/archives/caro30.htm.

Mike Caro is wrong. Well, rather, (just in case Mike ever reads this), I respectfully disagree.

Mike's basic premise is that the purpose of a tournament is to determine who the best poker player is. That's just flat out not the case.

You can't even say that, having played thousands of games, the person with the most money at the end is the best poker player. It's likely true but you can't guarantee it. There is no way to determine who the best poker player is. It's just not possible. The best you can do is to broadly group players into categories like 'worse', 'bad', 'fair', 'good', 'better', or 'best'.

If Mike really believes his theory, then I respectfully suggest that he take every penny he owns -- all his his assets, money... maybe even a couple of loans -- and bet it all in one single game of heads up poker with Bill Gates, who I'm sure can afford to take the bet. Multiple times in a row, if he wins. There's no question that Mike Caro is a better player than Bill Gates, but if ol' bill manages to pull a couple of suck-outs, it'd be all over for Mike.

Mike wouldn't take up that bet, of course, because he knows that the true test of a poker player is what happens to him in the long run, after statistics have had a chance to even out the bumps in the road.

Caro, is of course right, that the real goal of tournament poker is to eek into first place. That's no secret to good players -- and it's not a problem. Tournament poker is just a poker game, and like any other variant, it has it's own mathematics and it's own rules. There's no reason we shouldn't accept tournaments for the spice they are.

If Caro wants to play in shootouts, that's fine. There are plenty of them spread. But there are plenty of us who enjoy playing in today's tournaments. For a true "ultimate poker tournament", you need look no further than the lifetime winnings of every poker player on the planet.

-- ThoughtKeeper - 23 Mar 2007