Poker Experiment Scoring System

Intro paragraph this will change at different levels, but these are the most important factors for a novice to focus on

Category 1, HAND SELECTION (30% of the final score): You will be rated on which starting hands you decide to play, and more importantly how you enter pots with these hands. Did you raise / re-raise / call / limp-in? How much did you bet, and what position were you in when you made that bet? The outcome of these hands will not have any bearing on your score. You will be rated only on your understanding of starting hands and how to play them.

Category 2, BTK (30% of the final score): Board Texture Knowledge, or BTK (not to be confused with the BTK killer), is an advanced concept, but pivotal to any tournament success. You will be rated on how you played your hand AFTER the flop, and whether or not you understood the texture of those flops. For instance, did you recognize that the board helped you, either because of the hand you held or your table position. Did you stay in for a flush draw even though there were two Aces on the board? Points deducted. BTK scoring will continue throughout the hand, as new decisions have to be taken after the Turn and River as well. You will be rated on your ability to MAKE ADJUSTMENTS depending on the board - either knowing when you are beaten, or knowing to increase the pressure with increased bets.

Category 3, BETTING TECHNIQUES (25% of the final score): You will be rated on your ability to extract the most number of chips from given situations AND your abilities to limit losses in converse situations. You will be rated on your aggression, your weak moves (if any), and on your ability to trap opponents into handing over more of their chips. Betting techniques will also focus on how you played hands relative to the blind structures and your stack size at the time. This section could also be called stack-size management, as your betting techniques should differ based on the strength/weakness of your stack. Points are also earned for unpredictable betting patterns over the course of a tournament. Points are, therefore, deducted if your style of play becomes apparent based on overly consistent betting patterns.

Category 4, STREET SMARTS (10% of the final score): You will be rated on your ability to locate and exploit weak players, and your ability to avoid confrontations (until absolutely necessary) with players who are stronger than you - either in terms of stack size or general ability. You are rated on your ability to play the opponent rather than simply playing your cards. Points will be earned or lost based on the timing of your decisions - did you make a great laydown of a 50/50 hand because you had a lot of chips at the time? Points earned! Did you go all-in and show good aggression because you were short-stacked?
Points earned! Did you call the chip leader with a weak top-pair and continue calling all the way to the river, throwing off half your chips in the process? You score 0 for this category! That kind of thing....

Category 5, BURSTING THE BUBBLE (5% of the final score): Your goal is to make it to the bubble, and for every tournament where you manage this you will earn points in this category. The bubble is defined at the Top 5 of a 10 player Sit and Go, or double the number of payouts in multi-player tournaments (ie: In a tournament where they pay the top 10, you have made it to the bubble when there are 20 players left). You are then rated on your play from this point onwards, a key time in all tournaments. This section will include heads-up play at the end of the tournament, as well as the more complex three-handed situations one often gets involved in near the end of tournaments.

You will notice that Categories 1 and 2 are weighted more heavily than the others. This is a NOVICE's scoring system, and for that reason those first two categories are deemed more important because they are the most glaring weaknesses for the majority of novice players. If you can avoid mistakes here you will have advanced past the most basic errors that hold back new poker players. If anything, betting techniques, street smarts and playing to and through the bubble are more complex areas, but they also need to be built up only AFTER the first two categories are solid. That's why I am skewing the importance - the foundations have to be great before we win the actual tournament in Category 5!

As we progress the % of these categories will shift as well - but at the low tournament level I firmly believe that hand selection and borad texture knowledge are CRUCIAL - so much so that if you do well in these categories you will cash in 80% of the tournaments you play. Later on you need a lot more than these basic tools to give you the chance to win, but we'll get to that later.

For every tournament you play you will receive a grade out of a possible total of 100. Once you score 80 or higher three consecutive times you are ready to move up a level in tournament play. The first level of play is $5 to $10 buy-in tournaments. The second level, and our first goal is to play in $15 to $20 buy-in tournaments.