[Cosimo]

Bumpage? Most recent thread on this subject that search turned up.

First place (in step 1, mini steps) advances, but 2-5 get to try again, and 6 gets $4 cash. I would think your goal in the first one is to NOT go out too early, and to try to get either 1st or 5th -- the same idea as "1st or 3rd", ie once you make it past the cutoff, go for the throat.

For every 5880 entrants into the Step 1, they take $35,280 in entry fees and hand out $20,070 in prizes. This is 1169 games, so they're taking $13 for every game they run. It's like a $3.4+2.6 game, far far far far worse than any other SNG prolly offered anywhere on the net.

Those 5880 entrants into step 1 join with a bunch that are getting shuttled around, such that 980 step 1 games are run. 4900 people bust out in their first round of Step 1. During the same cycle, 210 other people will bust out of the higher rounds, so once you make it past step 1, you're going to be playing many more games before you get ejected from the system.

For every 980 people that make it up out of the step 1s, only 20 win big prizes -- the rest shuttle through the system, moving up and down until they eventually bust out.

A little bit of linear algebra, and:
EV step 5: $800
EV step 4: $246
EV step 3: $70
EV step 2: $22
EV step 1: $3.40

The worst bit is having to go another round, which stretches your play time out. I think moving down a step is the worst bit, so that means: you really really want to be in the top 4 or 5. You don't want to go back to step one, and even going down one step drains a huge amount of EV. In the higher levels, I think you're best off trying to not go down rather than focus on winning.

I'd look at the other two step types, but this took WAY too long, so I'm not gonna.