early flips

[schwza]

according to ICM, doubling up on the first hand only gives you .184 of the prize pool compared to .10 before doubling, so it would appear that taking an early flip for your stack is horrible. but if you're trying to maximize $/hr instead of ROI (it's obvious that you should be, imo), you need to know how much time doubling adds to your game, on average. does anyone know this information, or at least have some impression?

it could matter a lot - here are some completely made up numbers.

suppose i one-table 11's (one-tabling does not affect the argument, just makes it simpler). my ROI is 20% (so my expected payout is 1.2 * 11 = 13.2) and my average stt takes 40 minutes. my hourly rate is $2.20/40 min = $3.30/hr.

if i double up on the first hand, assume my expected payout is multiplied by 1.84 (could be higher or lower in reality), so it's 24.3, for a profit of $13.3. also assume that it takes 50 minutes on average if i double immediately, for a rate of $16/hr.

thus, passing on a flip has an hourly EV of $3.30. taking a flip has an hourly EV of:

.5 (16) + .5 (-11 + 3.30) = 8 - 3.85 = 4.15 [-11 for busting, + 3.30 for his EV in the next one]

so with these numbers that i made up, it looks like this guy should take a flip on the first hand.

i'm not saying this proves anything at all; i just wanted to point out that some of 2+2's horror at playing in the first level can be traced to incorrectly focusing on ROI instead of $/hr. if someone has some better guesses for actual numbers, i'm all ears.