[betgo]

[ QUOTE ]
"Snyder's advice is specifically tailored to B&M dailies/weeklies, repeatable events with no extrinsic value. If you're playing in those, the only appropriate measure of success is hourly rate, and taking early coinflips will increase that."

Finally a correct statement. It WILL increase your hourly rate. That's of debatable importance if busting out early means you go home early. But is important if you will stay to play either a side game or another tournament. Concepts I mention specifically in my book. (Does Snyder?)

The problem is that it is completely off the subject. The ONLY thing that I'm discussing here is that Snyder wrote tons of words about how I was wrong when I say that smaller stacks, above a certain threshold are worth more per chip than larger stacks. Given you arebetter than most of the field. That's stupid even in winner take all events. Stupider still when there are multiple prizes. And when you add in that he claimed that smaller stacks are worth less than than their rightful proportion in head up games you are moving beyond stupid (because the disproof is so elementary and ironclad.)

[/ QUOTE ]
There is a lot I agree with here. First of all, Snyder's arguments are mostly silly, particularly his claim that the player with less chips has an advantage HU. Snyder recognizes that the theory Sklansky and others propound about more chips being worth less does not always hold, but he gives the wrong reasons and tries to argue that the theory is wrong in general, which it is not.

Secondly, the hourly rate issue is important. Even if Sklanky is right in the example about doubling up at the beginning of a $500 tournament that the buyin is worth $1000 to a good player and the double up is worth $800, it would still be advantageous for the player to gamble, because if he busts out, his time is available for something else. This is the way typical ordinary pros and semipros think, particularly online, where they can fire up another tournament, or they are multitabling 7 tournaments at a time or the tournament with a bunch of cash games.

Also, Brunson said in "Super System" that he learned by watching Moss that it was better to avoid big gambles early on and survive at the WSOP. This was counter to Brunson's cash game style. Now Brunson and Moss both had huge skill advantages at the early WSOPs, strong though the field may have been. The average poster in the MTT forum has a significant skill advantage in the tournaments he plays in, but not on the level of Moss and Brunson. Even in the tournaments he plays in, Negreanu has a very large skill advantage over the field, which may lead him to avoid gambling. Also, the survival approach works better in a small event such as early WSOPs than in a large event, such as recent WSOP MEs and many online tournaments.

The other point is the nature of typical late tournament play. Early tournament play tends to be excessively loose, particularly online. Late tournament play tends to be excessively tight and survival oriented. This is particularly true approaching any kind of bubble, where typical play is extremely weak/tight. This extreme weak/tight play leads to strategies which would be incorrect otherwise becaomming correct. It is easier to take adavantage of that tight play with a big stack, particularly since weak/tight players tend to avoid a confrontation with a big stack. Therefore it may be advantageous to gamble to maintain a stack atleast twice the average stack to increase one's ability to acquire more chips.

I think TPFAP really does not address this issue much. At that time, people generally did not play NLHE tournaments full time, and certainly Sklansky didn't. At this point tournament players have more experience with typical conditions and have developed strategies to suit the conditions.