[DonT77]

I agree with Durron, in that having a large stack has its advantages (blind stealing, blind protecting, being a bubble bully, continuation betting, 'putting a man to a decision for all his chips', etc.) - so while your % of total chips increases, the "effectiveness of your stack" (rather than your skill level) also increases. This goes back to the ("Gigabet") discussions that sometimes it maybe be +$EV to take a slightly -cEV play because of the relative worth of various stack sizes.

I do think that someday some 2+2 calculus wiz will figure out the cEV/$EV relationship across the multi-dimensional curve that includes (as a minimum) the variables: #players, stack sizes, and payout structure.

Probably the biggest difficulty in solving this problem (aside from different players having different skill levels) is trying to quantify the advantages of a big stack (which will vary from player to player).


To Mason's conjecture-

In the MTTs where I never double-up my $EV is extremely low - quite possibly 0.

It seems that the earlier a player doubles-up the better his chances are of making the final table, and the longer it takes to double-up the more his chances of making the final table diminish as he is fighting the battle of having a less than average stack (and not having the afore-mentioned big stack benefits) and the vulnerability of being taken out by a larger stack for most of the tournament.

So empirically, I think ZJ's coin-flip example has some merit and that a person's $EV after doubling up early may actually be greater than 2x his starting $EV - although I don't have the mathematical wherewithal to prove it.