Big Brother 17 and How Table Image Can Cost you $500k
With the most important Head of Household competition airing tomorrow and only Nicole, Cliff, Michie and Holly left in the house, I thought I would throw in a blog entry I wrote all the way back at BB17...but I had no website to post it on. It still goes down for me as one of the worst screw-ups in BB history:
Everyone has it. That television show that you can’t believe you watch, but you do. Something that you probably wouldn’t openly admit you watch in public, but discuss often with your significant other. For me, that show is Big Brother. From all appearances, this should be a show that I hate. It’s a voyeuristic reality game show with a bunch of mismatched personalities, all designed to create drama, tension and consequently, polarizing television. Throw a $500,000 first place prize in the mix and you can guarantee fireworks. For me however, the real draw is the strategy.
Big Brother from a game standpoint, is quite complex. In the current game format, you have a competition, sometimes physical, sometimes mental, to determine two “Heads of Households.” The two “Heads of Households” each nominate two more people to be on a team to compete against each other in the “Battle of the Block” contest. The two winners of the “Battle of the Block” contest overthrow the “Head of Household” that nominated them. This leaves the losing team on the block, and one final “Head of household”. From this point the two nominees left on the block have one last chance to remove themselves individually by competing in a “Power of Veto” competition. This competition is played by the Head of Household, the two members on the block and three random house guests. The winner of the POV competition has the power to remove one contestant from the block or keep the nominations the same. If a contestant is removed from the block, the Head of Household will have to nominate someone to replace them. The final two members of the block, will go up for eviction, voted by the houseguests. This weekly cycle continues until two houseguests remain. Then in a strange twist the eventual game winner is picked from the remaining final two by the last eight houseguests to be evicted. In case you missed it, your goal is to send others home, but send them packing happy enough to give you $500,000. Winning Big Brother is not easy. You have to be fairly multifaceted. You must be smart, in shape and social. You need friends. You also need enemies. Like I said, it's a complex game.
When the contestants are revealed every year the rough chances of each contestant winning is 1 in X number of contestants. This year, there were 17 contestants. Each person would begin with roughly 17-1 odds since everyone is a virtual unknown. But not this year. Insert Vanessa Rousso. From the moment I saw she was on Big Brother this year, I told my wife, “There is your winner”. Vanessa Rousso is a professional poker player with approximately $3.5 million dollars in tournament winnings. She has a bachelor's in game theory. She graduated from Duke in a university record of 2.5 years and went to law school on the Chaplin Scholarship at the University of Miami. She studies psychology and is proficient in chess and of all things a master at a Rubik’s Cube. If you think the latter is a child’s game, perhaps you need to revisit that childhood challenge. Needless to say, Vanessa had the mental capacity to be the odds on favorite from the jump, and that made her my pick.
If you are wondering why I would put so much stock in a person that makes their living playing poker, let me explain. I was fortunate enough to begin playing online poker during the Chris Moneymaker poker boom. Chris Moneymaker was a no-name winner of the World Series of Poker, and it was all televised on ESPN. He won his trip to the WSOP through a low-limit online tournament and bested a massive field of known poker pros to beat the odds and come out on top to win $2.5 million dollars. The poker world exploded. Online poker exploded. Everyone thought they could become the next Chris Moneymaker. I became an online poker player.
For several years I worked my way up through the ranks of online poker from micro limits, to low limits to medium limit cash games, sit-and-go’s, and multi-table tournaments. I took advantage of tracking software to learn my opponent’s play and to plug up holes in my own game. I used a 37” monitor to play 6-8 tables at once and maximize my hourly rate. That hourly rate far exceeded what I made at work. I had conversations with my father, my bosses at work, and my friends about quitting my job and going pro, though I never did. I never spent my capital and my bankroll would effectively double every couple of months. If you had the skills, it was a license to print money. Today, online poker in the US is very different, and now, illegal in all but a few states. Players are better, games are harder to come by and in general, it is just not as lucrative as it was 10 years ago. I no longer play online or for a bankroll, but I will grab a cash game in Vegas when I am there. It has once been said years ago “Poker is a microcosm of life.” I couldn’t agree more. I believed that experience would give Vanessa a large advantage in BB17. And I was right.
Vanessa started out playing a stellar game, and she almost ended it that way. Big Brother is a game of incomplete information, just like poker. She collected data, even when that data collection was obvious. She lied. She bluffed. She controlled everything. If you have ever seen Daniel Negreanu with a stack of chips to his chin in a poker tournament, you know what this looks like. Laughing, smiling, talkative...all the while busting out every single person that dares to tangle with him. It’s a sight to behold and Vanessa was executing in the exact same manner. She was responsible either directly or indirectly for every single eviction. With half the field out the door by her hand, we were on our way to witnessing the best game player in Big Brother history. But it was not to be. Despite all of her poker acumen, Vanessa made two mistakes. One of those mistakes I would consider “rookie.” The other requires a greater deal of mental dexterity but is still something that should be easily mastered by a seasoned pro such as Vanessa.
Mistake #1: Never Correct Your Opponent.
Vanessa was cruising, eliminating everyone in sight and no one even knew what was happening until it was too late. Then one night, out of the blue while coaching a houseguest on what move they should make, she informed them that their move was “wrong” and that she was an “expert in game theory.” I will never understand this. She is basically informing the competition that she has a decided advantage in game play. Sure, she didn’t tell them she played poker for a living, but that hardly mattered. Once your opponents are aware that you have an advantage, it is incorrect for them to pass on a chance to eliminate you, unless that decision increases their chances of winning. She revealed information that she didn’t need to and she brought awareness to her level of gameplay that was not previously there. If your opponent is making mistakes, let them continue.
Mistake #2: Table Image and Changing Gears
In poker, table image is everything. Table image is the other players perception of your game play. In a cash game, you can always re-buy your way into the game, so going broke at the table is not as big of a deal. In fact, if you aren’t going broke in a cash game from time to time, you are playing it incorrectly. However, if you go broke in a tournament, you are eliminated and lose your chance to make any more money. Vanessa knows this, but she played Big Brother like a cash game instead of the tournament that it is. Once players were on to her, and she knew it, she never changed gears. If you are bluffing your way through a poker tournament and running your opponents out of every hand, and you get caught, you must slow down. You have to play less hands and reverse your table image into that of a tight(er) player. The next hand you are forced to show down needs to be good. Contrarily, if you have been playing only good hands, playing tight, and your opponents are beginning to pick up on this, you must switch gears and begin to bluff more. Vanessa kept the hammer down the entire time. And once she knew the house was on to her ways, she didn’t back off. She didn’t slow down. This put a target on her back so big that the entire reason she was eliminated in 3rd place (which doesn’t pay anything) is because the ultimate winner of the game knew that eliminating her instead of taking her to final two would draw votes his way just for the mere fact that he was the one to finally take out the queen. He was right.
In the end, Vanessa got caught trying to run over the game, busted on the bubble (the last spot to NOT pay), and was rushed straight into jury where she had to vote on live television for one of the last two remaining contestants. You could see it on her face. You could see the wheels spinning. To the average viewer Vanessa screwed up by not winning the very last competition to ensure her spot into the final two. Being a former poker player myself, I can assure you that Vanessa did not see it this way. She was already flashing back to the times that she could have slowed down, backed off and switched gears. She was thinking back to how she revealed her advantage in the game verbally. She was thinking that if she never made the mistake of correcting her opponent and ruining her table image, that she would not have been targeted by the final “Head of Household” for elimination.
In the end, it was a great run but one that was ultimately ended by mistakes that she should be above making. In poker, it takes a lot longer to beat someone who doesn’t know how to play than it does to beat a skilled opponent. This is because it is more difficult to figure out someone who has no idea what they are doing themselves. Your win percentage will be much higher against unskilled opponents, it just takes longer beat them. Vanessa is so used to competing against skilled opponents that she forgot this paradigm and it cost her dearly. Not only did she lose the game, but she educated her opponents and future Big Brother contestants along the way.
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