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5.Support game structures which are good for the survival of the game.
Mason Malmuth has written extensively on the effects of various poker betting structures, and on the balance of luck and skill in poker. He has pointed out that the standard two level betting structure currently used in most limit poker games, with the small blind half the size of the big blind, seems to provide a near optimum balance of luck and skill.
This is, an expert player can achieve a satisfactory hourly rate, but players experience fluctuations with a large enough standard deviation that weaker players will win often enough to say interested in the game. On the other hand, there are some structures which unduly punish weaker players. No limit, pot limit, and spread limit games, for instance, provide the stronger player with an inordinate advantage. The result is that weaker players lose their money too quickly and consistently to allow (typically) for the long term survival of such games. I have had experience with other structures, which may threaten the survival of a game. One of these is the “kill” games played in many areas including parts of California. The usual procedure in one version of these games is as follow: Say you are playing a $10-$20 kill game.
It is played as a normal $10-$20 game, expect that if someone wins two pots in a row he has to “kill” it by posting a $20 blind, twice the normal big blind. The usual $5and $10 blinds are posted by the appropriate players as well. Then, on that hand, the limit doubles to $20-$40. The same player keeps killing it until he loses a pot. Then the limit reverts to $10-$20. While many players enjoy the added bit of excitement this adds to the poker game, few realize that the kill structure gives an extra edge to better players. This is in large part because it is most often weaker players who are doing the “killing.”They are more likely to win two pots in a row because they are in more pots, and stay to the end more frequently. Consequently, in a kill game they post more blinds than do the stronger players. This amounts to an extra monetary contribution made by already losing players.
Add to this a few adjustments that a better player makes in his play in response to the kill structure, but a less educated player fails to make, and you have a significant increase in the advantage of the former over the latter. The ratio of skill to luck is thus thrown out of balance in a kill game. Though this problem is far less pronounced that in a structure like no-limit, it is nonetheless bad for the survival of a game. If the health of a game is at all tenuous already, the use of such a structure could be enough to tip the scale toward the game’s demise. There is a variation on the kill structure that used to be seen sometimes in a cardroom that I frequented. We called it “leave it in.” It is played as a skill game in which every pot is killed. In $10-$20 kill – “leave it in, ” there are the usual $5 and $10 blinds plus a $20 kill blind posted buy the winner of every pot.
Every hand is played at the $20-$40 limit. Notice that when you post the kill blind you are, in effect, just leaving in front of you’re the same blind (hence, “leave it in ”) that was posted by the poker winner of the previous pot. It simply travels from pot winner to pot winner, never going into anyone’s stack. Therefore that blind does not contribute what a normal blind would to the value of the pot you are trying to win. You can never take possession of it as your own money because you must post it as soon as you win it. Its value is that it gains you free entry to the next pot, barring a raise before the action gets to you. Moreover, because you never really take possession of it, it costs you nothing to post the kill blind you just leave it in.
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