Which would you prefer...
 

First hand of the tournament, someone gets bust while another doubles up. I see this a lot, but I wonder if this is +ev or -ev for those with the regular stack sizes.

I used to think, one down puts me closer to the money. While this may somewhat be true, the fact is I still have the same stack basically, so have I really made progress? Furthermore, a player now has a larger stack, and can bully around us in the near future.

I've been doing some more thoughts on this, and can't really come up with which scenario is best. Starting hand #2 with everyone at an average stack, or with 1 less player, but an opponent with 2x the stack.

Re: Which would you prefer...
 

It's +ev for me if a donkey doubled up with a suckout. As long as I saw the cards and then get reads from them, I find it beneficial.

As for outcome, I don't think it matters that much. Your too far from the money to become that important. If donkey stacks 2-3 people not it can play because his range can be huge and you know he is ready to gamble..

As for bullying, he call bully all my lvl 1/2 is he wants, i'll wait for a hand and stack him.

Re: Which would you prefer...
 

According to ICM your EV goes up from 10% of the prize pool to something like 10.2% of the prize pool if someone doubles up on the first hand and you still have a normal starting stack, although I agree it depends strongly on who now has double the chips of everyone else. If a good player doubles up I guess it could hurt you cause he'll have those chips for later on and can use them to own the bubble. Still, I'm generally happy to see it cause that's one less person I gotta go through.

Re: Which would you prefer...
 

http://www.poker-tools-online.com/icm.html

Put in 1500 for 10 players and fill out the prizes and note everyones equity.

Change player 1 to 3000 and player 10 to 0 and see the difference. You gain a few %.

You're right in that you still have 1500 chips out of 13,500 as before but since 3 spots pay it helps you out. To see the difference, change the payouts for spots 2 and 3 to $0. Now when a person busts all of his equity transfers to the person who won the chips and everyone else stays the same.