[mornelth]

Thinking about M and stuff. M is the rough measure of the number of ORBITS you can fold and not play a hand and still stay in the tourney, right?

If your M is 30 - you're in the green zone, right?... The CORRECT answer is the good ol' favorite "it depends". If blinds are going to be doubled in the next couple of hands - your M will be 15. If blinds are going to be doubled in two orbits - then your REALISTIC (my definition) M is ... 16! Meaning, you CAN lose 2 orbits of blinds (your M drops to 28) and once the blinds double - your M gets chopped in half (2+14=16). Right so far?

Using similar extrapolation it should be clear that when you start two ALMOST EXACT SAME tournaments (starting chips, blinds, # of players, etc.) with the only difference being length of each level - then your M calculated by HOHII formula will be the same, but your REALISTIC M will be lower in the tournament with the shorter levels. This will continue to be the case throughout the tournament, so a strategy adjustment is absolutely necessary.

Let's assume you are enter Level 9 with an M of 14. Tournament structure 1 will have around 60 hands at this level, tournament structure 2 - only 30. Blinds will double after this level. In #1 you have 6 orbits in which to choose which hand to play before your M (and your FE) goes down the tubes, in #2 - only 30. I think it is OBVIOUS that you should be playing more aggressive/loose in #2 than #1 at this point. And (without reading the book) I think the point in question is - the faster the structure is - the more aggressive you should be in the early stages to accumulate a good-sized stack before everyone realizes that their M is [censored] and it's pushbot time.

Edit: Assuming all levels in #1 are 60 hands and 30 hands in #2 - your REALISTIC M in #1 is 10.5, and your REALISTIC M in #2 is 7.5 .

I do intend to buy the book at the first opportunity (when I'm done sqeezing every last drop of wizdom from NLHE-TaP).