Tournament Add-on question

[72allin]

I attend a monthly no limit hold'em tournament that my friend holds at his house. For a while it's been just a $30 buy-in for 3000 chips, but recently (to sweeten the prize pool) he's started offering an optional 500 chip add-on before the first hand is dealt for an additional $5.

My question is, is this worth it? Roughly 20-24 people play in these tournaments, should a certain percentage take the add-on before I do?

[Stew]

[ QUOTE ]
I attend a monthly no limit hold'em tournament that my friend holds at his house. For a while it's been just a $30 buy-in for 3000 chips, but recently (to sweeten the prize pool) he's started offering an optional 500 chip add-on before the first hand is dealt for an additional $5.

My question is, is this worth it? Roughly 20-24 people play in these tournaments, should a certain percentage take the add-on before I do?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's a break-even proposition. Since the initial buy-in is $30, you basically figure you are getting 6 sets of 500 chips for your $30. So, basically buying the add-on does not mean you are getting any additional value out of the extra chips.

However, it is worth it if you are clearly a better big stack player than a small stack.

Conversely, it is not if the opposite were true.

It's pretty irrelevant how many others take the add-on themselves since this occurs at the beginning of the tournament as compared to after the first hour when you have average stack size to consider.