CardPlayer article re: high buy-in structures----agree or disagree?

[Alan Goehring]

An article in the 12/20 CardPlayer (p.74) makes two primary points:

1. We should eliminate players from tournaments quickly until the money is reached. "In the early stages of the tournament, eliminate players quickly. This can be done by starting at a higher level, playing shorter rounds early, or eliminating some of the early levels".

Reading this made me cringe, as I believe the "typical" big buy-in structure today is deficient in deep-chip play and the early bust out rate is too high. I think we need to see more play in the 100-300BB range, not less. For example, 30k SC with 50/100, 75/150, 100/200, 100/200/ante, 150/300/ante, 200/400/ante----would give six levels of deep chip play (i.e., over 100BB's assuming 1/4 field gone by end of level 5).

I do agree there is such a thing as "too deep". For example Fallsview started 800BB's (25/25 & 20k SC) and skipped the critical 100/200/0 level, and the upcoming Borgata event starts 600BB's (25/50 & 30k SC) but has no (extremely sweet) 100/200/25.

2. "When it doesn't matter, you have a lot of play. When it really counts, you have little or no play"

This argument says it is not really important how much randomness you have when AS=12k, it is significantly more important to have less randomness when AS=120k. I think one could make the opposite argument that if you are out of the tournament, the structure doesn't matter to you, and the play at AS=120k only impacts 10% of the players (vs. AS=12k). I believe the correct answer is that the "aggregate amount of chips in play" is constant throughout the entire event, so it "really counts" equally throughout the entire event (as the aggregate amount of chips impacted remains the same at every level). My view is you need to start off slow so that early volatility can be accomodated, and time is given for a large stack to both be accumulated AND maintained.

I guess I view the suggestions set forth in the CardPlayer article as a way to turn existing tournaments into even bigger "donkaments". And since I am already not traveling to events with marginal structures, I would play even fewer events if the early randomness factor is further increased.

So I ask you, am I misunderstanding the article, are my views those of an almost non-existent minority, or does the CardPlayer article not make sense?