Are Party/skin 1-table qualifiers anything other than gimmicky SNGs??

[teddyFBI]

I've been playing in a few SNG qualifiers on Party/Empire (usually in the $20 - $35 range) lately to win seats to some of the bigger tournaments, like WSOP, quarter mil guaranteed, etc. etc...

But it dawned on me: is there really any point in playing in these "special" SNGs instead of the plain old SNGs available 24/7?? I mean, the prize pool is the same, it's just distributed via a dif medium: tourney freerolls instead of cash (for regular SNGs)...in fact, it's probably even worse to get a freeroll instead of cash, b/c you can spend cash anyway you want...am I missing something?

[CUonCRUISE]

I find the players are weeker in qualifiers and steps than the regular sng's.

[eastbay]

You're not missing much. As noted, the play in these things can be worse since people may be playing them who are not SnG regulars.

eastbay

[ilya]

Satellites are more profitable than SnGs if your 1/2/3 distribution is topheavy (note that once you win enough freerolls to cover every instance of that kind of tournament for the week you're playing in, you start getting paid in cash).

For example, say your ITM is 40% and your 1/2/3 distribution is 15%/15%/10%.

You make 14/tournament on average with a 50/30/20 distribution (50*0.15 + 30*0.15 + 20*0.1), but 15/tournament with a 100/0/0 distribution (100*0.15).

This is actually quite a big difference: 27.3% ROI vs. 36.4% ROI.

I would play them if my 1/2/3 distribution was indeed topheavy.