Leverage

Lets imagine for a moment that you have skill and knowledge at poker that exceeds a subset of all poker players. So now you are tasked with extracting value from your knowledge and skill advantage over the weaker players. You may chose to do this by playing cash games, MTTs or S&Gs of any stakes. When you select what stakes and game you will play to extract value, it is best to chose the game and stakes where you can apply the most leverage to your skill advantage. Good players will figure this out and play the games that maximize their leverage or ($/Hr in profit). For me, a cash game specialist, my leverage is maximized when I three table the 1/2NL Holdem cash games on FullTilt. This is where my profits per hour are maximized. This is where my leverage is currently the highest. I can 4 table .50/1NL, but don't earn the same rate. When I 4 table 1/2NL, my earnings rate drops as well. Some people chose to multitable S&Gs. Some people multitable MTTs. Some people only play one table at a time. If they are maximizing profit per hour by making this choice, they are maximizing the leverage of their skill advantage.

But, leverage has its limits. You can only play so many tables at once before you leverage is decreased. You need time to make decisions to extract the value of your skill advantage. When you are on too many tables at once, you don't get the time, your decisions suffer as a result, and your win rate goes down. There are limits to the amount of leverage you can apply in poker.

Now lets take the contests on FantasySportsLive.com and see how much leverage you can apply if you have a skill advantage in drafting players (due to your superior sports knowledge). The leverage that can be applied is almost unlimited. Once you figure out your rooster for the day which takes some careful and skillful thought, you can enter multiple contests with the same or similar rooster. Since this is not like poker, you don't need to do anything once you have made your draft selections (which just takes a few minutes/contest). You are not limited to a number of tables due to limited decision time. You have an unlimited amount of time to make your draft decision, and then you have finished all of the work for that contest.

It is almost like this. If you could write a program that exactly mirrored how you play poker and included your skill advantage, you could use the program to play for you. You could enter 100s of S&Gs or cash games at a time and really leverage your skill advantage at those stakes. But writing a program like that is not easy at all, and you would be a bot and potentially caught by the poker site. On FSL you don't need to write the program, just enter a bunch of contests and let your draft skillz do all the work. It is pretty easy money because of this.

So if you guys have not checked the site out you are missing out. Bobby Bracelet, Joe Speaker, FallStaff, DonkeyPuncher, 23skidoo, Pauly, Iggy, Change100, OSU, chipper, kajagugu, GCox, TripJax, and many other bloggers are regulars and doing quite well. Mr. Bracelet, and Mr. Speaker are pretty much pwning the other players on the site. If you are waiting for football, I understand (I can't wait myself), but you might want to get a feel for how things work so you can begin applying the leverage immediately when the FB contests begin. Lastly, check out this post by Joe Speaker which does a great job of describing the phenomenon we have created with these types of contests.

I plan on playing the MATH tonight and possibly the 50/50, so hope to see everyone on the virtual felt.