[gumpzilla]

You're going to need some kind of justification for your choices of A and B for me to take this particularly seriously. 25% move up, 50% move down? Why should this be? What I will give you is that it seems right that fewer should move up than move down, simply because the existence of the rake suggests that the median earn is probably negative.

I also think that the assumption that there is one way to play poker, that way being NLHE SNGs at a particular site, is pretty poor. At any given time there are going to be people switching over to Omaha, taking up poker as a new hobby and blowing their $200 at the $55s, etc.

One point in Irie's argument that I always found a little bit soft is that it assumes rational players who keep detailed records and have some idea whether they are winning or losing. Does this seem like an accurate depiction of fish? I think a lot of the fish are going to come in, donate their bankroll at some random relatively low buyin and vanish into the night, leaving the system. So the equilibrium needs to include not only people who move between levels, but people who enter and exit the world of SNG poker. Whether this has a huge impact on SNG difficulty is hard to say. One could probably make some reasonable assumptions about the injection of fresh fish at each level.