Simulating The November Nine Part 1: The Process and Results

In 2012 when Russell Thomas made the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event, he hired poker pro Jason Somerville to coach him.

Somerville has spoken out about this training regimen in several interviews, part of which included a number of final table simulations. It was shown in an excellent video series created and produced by Somerville and shot and edited by Jake Gabbay and Justin Tyrrell, who also dubbed The Final Table.

Somerville brought in pro players and friends to emulate the styles of the different players in the November Nine and they put Thomas through the paces. They recreated the conditions he would encounter at the final table, analyzed it all and developed strategies around the different situations he would run in to, making sure he was prepared for anything and everything.

I can remember thinking these simulations were likely to ensure Thomas, who ultimately made fourth at the final table, would come into the final nine among the most prepared.

This year, when the final nine was set in mid July, hordes of poker media descended upon the Amazon Room stage seeking quotes from this year’s November Nine. In the melee, I joined a scrum surrounding Gordon Vayo and asked what his plan was to prepare for the final table.

“I’m going to do a lot of playing and run simulations,” he said. “I have some friends that are really good poker players and hopefully they can emulate some of the styles of these guys and we can run some good simulations to prepare.”

For the media, that night was about capturing the excitement of the players making the November Nine and getting some honest initial reaction. As has become custom, the next day the media was invited to sit down with the players in a more casual setting at the Palazzo Suites next to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino and the Convention Center where the WSOP is held. PokerNews conducted relatively in-depth audio and video interviews with the players there. These formed the basis for a series of November Nine bios that have run on the site for the past nine weeks.

Planning Our Own Simulation

As we ran through the process of creating these bios, outlining who these players were and how they managed to make this year’s Main Event final table, it dawned on me how valuable the information would be to anyone running a Main Event simulation. The facts contained in each could provide a solid blueprint for emulating each of the player’s styles in a simulation. Then I started thinking perhaps PokerNews should run one.

Using the information we had gathered, we could devise a basic playing style for each of the players, simulate the final table a number of times and provide readers a reasonably researched prediction of how things would shake out come November. By no means did I ever think we could predict exactly who would win the Main Event this year with any real accuracy, there are just too many variables for that, but it certainly seemed like a fun way to create some interesting content and give us all a better idea of who might come out on top.

Of course, whether we used PokerNews staffers, who live everywhere from Jomtien, Thailand to San Diego, California, or pro players, who have relationships with the site and are almost always on the road, putting together a live …

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