Amir Lehavot Selling Action For World Series Of Poker Main Event Final Table

Update: The answer below is WRONG. Please see my retraction.


This looks like an investment with a 17% advantage. Read the details at cardplayer.com. As usual, the article doesn't tell the reader the important information to determine the value of shares on Amir. Here is how many chips each player has and the share of the total.

Player	Chips	Share
JC Tran	38,000,000	19.93%
Amir Lehavot	29,700,000	15.58%
Marc McLaughlin	26,525,000	13.91%
Jay Farber	25,975,000	13.62%
Ryan Riess	25,875,000	13.57%
Sylvain Loosli	19,600,000	10.28%
Michiel Brummelhuis	11,275,000	5.91%
Mark Newhouse	7,350,000	3.85%
David Benefield	6,375,000	3.34%

Here is how much each place wins.

Place	Win
1st	$8,359,531
2nd	$5,173,170
3rd	$3,727,023
4th	$2,791,983
5th	$2,106,526
6th	$1,600,792
7th	$1,225,224
8th	$944,593
9th	$733,224

Total prize money to top 9 = $26,662,066. Amir's expected win above the guaranteed 9th place win is 15.58%*$26,662,066 - $733,224 = $3,419,724. Each 1% of that is worth $34,197. The article says each 1% share costs $29,248. That would be an expected return of 34197/29248 = 117%, or a 17% advantage.

Assuming he can be trusted to pay, and not throw the game, this is a great value.

So are you buying a share? Is it legal, by the way? My guess if you win it would be taxable income, but if you lose it would be hard for most to deduct, possibly turning it into a negative EV situation.

Looks like Amir doesn't have a lot of faith in his ability to finish where he is currently at. Or am I looking at this too simply?

Quote: Boz

Looks like Amir doesn't have a lot of faith in his ability to finish where he is currently at. Or am I looking at this too simply?

He is simply hedging. If he sold all of his shares he guarantees $2.9 million. Bad luck/bad play could limit him to 700k. If he wins the main event, even though he is out many millions initially, he gets entries into other big +EV events, endorsements, etc.

It's a question we ask here periodically, when does a number become big enough that chasing more +EV is not worth it? I think we would all take 100% chance at $2.9million over a 10% chance at $32million as an example.

It's better to use icm here.

This seems like a win/win for Amir. Sell 300% of yourself, bust out first, make $10 million.

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Quote: DRich

This seems like a win/win for Amir. Sell 300% of yourself, bust out first, make $10 million.

Springtime for Hitler?

It seems like a good deal to me. Amir is a poker pro and has won a $10K buy-in tournament before so knows what he is doing.

Quote: kenarman

It seems like a good deal to me. Amir is a poker pro and has won a $10K buy-in tournament before so knows what he is doing.

How are his past results remotely relevant if not taken into the context of his opponents results?

He could be the 9th best poker player on the planet. If the other 8 are at the table ...