♠ Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Am I Drunk, or Is This a Real Idea?
What if they sat a multi-table tournament, where all of the players were anonymous (the seats were "Seat1," "Seat2," and so on), and players changed tables every hand ... your opponents from one hand to the next were completely different? To complete the randomness, when you were down to the last, say, five tables, even position started changing randomly? You get the small and big blind the same number of times, but you can't know "Seat5 has a really loose player" anymore.
Gil's immediate thought was that it would take much of the skill out of the game, while my first thought was that the game would become very technical, with little room for insightful plays.
But on second thought, I wonder if it might help the hyper-aggressive player the most—he who plays 79o like it's AA. With no history, the "saner" players wouldn't know whether this is that nimrod who raises everything, or if it's someone who really has aces.
Are there other ramifications I don't see? This is, of course, the type of tournament that could only be run online. Anyone have an in with the sites to try it?
I name this the "random shuffle" tournament.
