The title is a reference to a corny joke from Doyle Brunson illustrating the idea that it can be correct to play any 2 cards. If you don’t have a copy of Super System handy – Broomcorn’s uncle was ‘auntied’ (anted) to death.

This entry had been sitting as a draft for the past week, but I was inspired by CJ’s recent on-line tourney rush to bring it out into public view.

In an effort to get myself off of what I feel is a tourney skill plataeu, I’ve been analysing and reworking my own tourney strategies. By playing in (slightly) higher buy-in tourneys, I’ve begun to see several different strategies that could bring my success level above just getting good cards. Phil Gordon’s “Little Green Book” has helped to crystallize some of the things that have been bouncing around in my head, as have the following two articles I saw while aimlessly wandering the poker-web.

1) an old article by Gigabet on the theory of stack sizes.

It is interesting not only for the concepts but the manner in which they are described. I’ve never heard anyone visualize poker the way he does.

It starts off with “Ok, boys and girls, this here may be the most -ev post I have ever written.”

Coming from a player with Gigabet’s on-line record, you know that has to be good.

2) a new article by Mat Matros at card player outlining the math behind when coinflips are good for you.

Both articles sparked a thought in some of my deeply buried neurons, the ones that retain the vestiges of my university classes in thermodynamics.

I will sum it up with one statement: tournament poker is a closed system.

One must think not only of the local conditions (your hole cards and position) but of the system as a whole (all of the chips in play).

In thermodynamics, the increase of entropy (randomness) is one of the guiding principles. Work must be applied in order to prevent entropy in a specific location.

In poker, the distribution of cards is random. A successful set of tourney strategies is one that works against this randomness and attempts to order all of the chips into your own stack. (As a side note – if everyone employs the same strategy, then the ordering will not be possible). Position, blinds & antes are the only non random occurence in poker. One knows exactly how these things will change.

In thermodynamics, no transfer of energy (work) is ever done with 100% efficiency.

Here is where the analogy begins to break down.

A physical system is deterministic: you can track down the inefficient energy transfer to things such as friction and other such imperfections in the contacts between system components.

In poker, the unpredictable part comes from the random nature specifically designed into the game. You don’t know what will come on the river, yet you must make decisions before you see it. Random events in poker also arise from the flawed nature of human behaviour. No one plays perfect poker (except maybe Phil Helmuth). And yet you must make decisions based on their past behaviour.

What does all of this mean? I don’t know, which is probably why I left this post sitting as a draft. However – if it sits there no one will ever be able to read it and tell me that I am crazy/genious.

Fire away!