WSOP payout structure the best yet - golden ratio and constant second derivative

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/6741-wsop-director-says-2009-payout-structure-the-best-yet

by jmatt • 17 years ago

6 5 17 years ago

rdj2• 17 years ago

The title reads like spam, but it looks like there is substance. Programming, financial modeling, psychology.

bendotc• 17 years ago

I disagree. They don't really go into why they made these decisions, but just "oh, our old model had weird sized differences between payouts of adjacent places." Why did it take them 6 years, a bunch of smart people, and hundreds or thousands of man-hours to use a second degree polynomial (constant second derivative) to determine payouts? I'm sure they dealt with more complicated problems than just figuring out an equation with a constant second derivative, but they don't really address that in this article.

rdj2• 17 years ago

I suppose I should clarify: I had been ignoring the link because I seriously thought HN had been hit by some spambot. After I read the article, I saw that there were topics that would be of interest to HN. You are correct, there are not a lot of details about how and why, but just bits of info. I personally think this is an interesting story of how a simple game of cards and "winner takes all" has evolved into the complex ecosystem it is now, using the tools we use in other endeavors.

jmatt• 17 years ago

That's exactly what I thought when I read it. How did it take so long to finally get to the point that they are using an intelligent payouts method.

That being said, I am happy to see any improvements in this area. I still see really crazy payout brackets. Less on-line. That seems to be where the changes are being made first.

didroe• 17 years ago

Some Googling has revealed a little more information from Greenstein:

http://www.pokerroad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6953

WSOP payout structure the best yet - golden ratio and constant second derivative

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