[Irieguy]

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What I found at PP is that chips became devalued as the blinds escalated

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Just a quick comment on this statement: it's important to understand that in a fixed payout structure tournament (like a SNG), there are two things that affect the value of a chip: 1)stack size and 2) the number of opponents left.

As your stack size decreases, each chip becomes more valuable because it will represent a bigger piece of relative equity in the prize pool. (See "Gambling Theory and Other Topics" for more on this).

Also, as players get knocked out, each chip increases in value because your chance of making the money increases. (Note that the "first-place value" of each chip never changes... it is always 1/8000 or 1/1000 of first place prize money in a PP SNG regardless).

So, as a SNG progresses, unless you are gaining chips your chips are increasing in value. I only point this out because it is a tremendously important concept in SNG strategy. What you do with each chip is much more important when you are short-stacked late than when you have a lot of chips early. These situations happen more frequently on PP than at Stars because of the structure. That means that great players who have very good judgement at critical times will do very, very well. But a good player who is apt to make a mistake with a short stack will have a difficult time maintaining a solid ROI. So that may explain why a relatively new, pretty good poker player will find the Stars structure easier to beat... whereas an experienced, expert level SNG player will prefer the Party structure where your results can be greatly impacted by your ability to exploit the end-game mistakes of your opponents.

Irieguy