Re: are the steps worth trying (NC)
 

Ok, say step 2 is a 50+5. You enter in it. 50 goes to the prizepool, 5 goes to party. Say you finish in a place that lets you do step 2 again. You have a "freeroll" worth 55$. that 55$ is drawn from the prizepool everyone contributed to. You enter the step 2 with your freeroll, and party takes out 5$ to its coffers. Each time you bounce around party takes rake and is 5$ richer, without paying out any real $$$.


So if you enter a 50+5 step, and bounce around 3 times, party makes 15$ but doesn't pay out any money. And the way the steps are structured people bounce around a lot.

Re: are the steps worth trying (NC)
 

Okay, that makes sense now. Thanks for the explanation.

But despite PP's greediness (can't say I blame them), would Steps be a good idea if you looked at them as practice? Given that there's so much bouncing around, I can afford to make more risky and experimental moves if busting out is going to lead to a freeroll anyway, right? Of course, I would have to take into account that, since the payout structure is radically different, EV+ plays would probaby be different than at the regular SNGs. So perhaps they're not such a good idea for practice; they may be a completely differernt species.

Re: are the steps worth trying (NC)
 

The idea of the steps being a "rake trap" is really a bit of a misnomer. In reality if one guy started playing a step 1 ad another guy decided to just play regular SNGs until he either busted or made $1000+x and bought into a step 5 both are in essence contributing a portion of their winnings back to party as rake, all players do that unless they cash out everytime they win.

The real problem I see with the steps is that the lowest ones are a waste of time for anyone who thinks they have a reasonable shot of making any money. Even if you buy-in at lvl 3, some of your prize pool is "wasted" on freerolls to lower level steps, which are usually -timeEV for a decent player. If however you are a low limit player just looking for something fun to do, I think they are fine as long as you understand they are essentialy a trap to get lowerlevel players to feed the top level sharks (but only in the same way something like a WSOP satellite is).