[DWarrior]

Another possible thing to consider for the better players is time spent doing other stuff. I'm just switching over from cash to tournaments now, so I don't go beyond $50 buy-ins, usually sticking to $20 and $11 RAs (no big wins yet, only first couple of weeks), but I can see how someone like zeejustin wouldn't want to bother playing a 3k stack in a $10 buy-in beyond the first hour when the average is 6.5k, when he can just hop into the next $100 buy-in. Besides, I don't know how serious the top players take these tournaments, are they just playing for the win or do they really care about squeezing out a few dollars of EV in these small events?

It's kind of similar to me playing on the bubble and early in the money, I can freely steal because the $10-$40 win is meaningless to me, so I personally don't care about avoiding a gamble to gain a couple of extra bucks, whereas a lot of players seem to be crazy about "finishing up", even if "up" is $.14.

Same with Daniel Negreanu. Beyond merely getting the first prize money, there are a ton more incentives that come with being 1st: the bracelet, sponsorship deals, leaderboard rankings, resume, that it makes sense for the top players to play strictly for 1st place. When Sklansky advocated that using such a strategy passes up EV, he did not account for all the addons today's big tournaments receive.