I just discovered what those "Step tournaments" are 
And that made me wonder, if it is better to play steps to practice SnG's or play normal buyins? It seems that all but the step 1 needs complete unluck to get kicked out as even low places get something - another try in a lower step. So I'd say that steps are better to practice, but I might be wrong.. am I?
EDIT: Besides the prev question. How hard is it to get the $2000 from Step 6? (When you've started from the bottom) Anyone here won it?
The (low, in particular) steps have hideous effective fees; unless they are quite literally populated by monkeys it should be absolutely impossible to win long term by buying into step 1s and working up from there.
Just checked my figures. It's a 150% effective fee for step 1. Not a typo, not a joke, and not, I'm afraid, a mistake. 150%.
this is one problem and the other problem is your arent going to win a lot. So u will have (long term seen) a -ROI at these Step sngs. It's nearly impossible to get from the bottom step to step 6. The only thing I can say is it's quiet profitable to directly buy in step 6, if u have something like 40-50 buy ins for it.
Buying directly into step 6 certainly is the best option for steps, each lower step has a higher effective fee. Whether step 6 is any better than playing normal sngs of a similar size I don't know.
Can anyone give a heads up on what that "effective fee" is? I don't belive I saw that term in the SnG articles.. And I haven't got to the BSS articles, so it might be hiding amongst there
And my idea was that if one could work up from Step1 to $2000, then it would be a nice investment for 300 PPs... That is it might take time.. and many tries, etc. But it doesn't take it off my BR at least and I have the possibility of learning SnG before going in with my own money + a very slim chance of winning some of that $2000
Any thoughts? Any reason I shouldn't carry out my plan?
A step 1's prize pool consists of two step 1 entries and two step 2 entries. The price of a step 1 entry is $3 and the price of a step 2 entry is $10, but these are not the values of the entries (making no assumptions about the relative skill levels of the players), the value is less. If these were the values, the prize pool would be $26, which means that the value of the step 1 entry would be $26... except it can't even be that, because we now know that the step 1 entry must be worth no more than $2.60, etc.
The same is true of all the steps, bar step 6 which only pays cash and is easy to work out the (unbiased) value of. You can create a system of linear equations to represent the values of each step entry (or the prize pools if you like, or the difference between the face value and actual value, which I call the effective fee).
0 = -8S_1 + 2S_2
0 = 3S_1 - 8S_2 + 2S_3
0 = 3S_2 - 9S_3 + 3S_4
0 = 2S_2 + S_3 - 9S_4 + 3S_5
-$940 = 2S_3 + 2S_4 - 8S_5
...you can write it other ways, but this is closest to the matrix form which can be inputted into automatic solvers, not being a toy problem this is a tad too tricky to do by hand. Such a solver is at http://wims.unice.fr/wims/en_tool~linear~linsolver.en.html (er, that one actually has a few modes of operation, but I hadn't googled before writing out the system).
The solution given is:
S_1 = $47/39 ~= $1.21 (face value is $3)
S_2 = $188/39 ~= $4.82 (face value is $10)
S_3 = $1363/78 ~= $17.47 (face value is $30)
S_4 = $3713/78 ~= $47.60 (face value is $70)
S_5 = $1739/13 ~= $133.77 (face value is $170)
Obviously it's not this bad if you have a solid edge in every level, as you're more likely to finish in the higher places and the entries are thus worth more to you, but one thing is absolutely clear: for anyone else, the lower steps are an appalling deal and the variance is also hideous. Quite singularly unsuitable for practice.
Get cash for your party points instead, 300 pp for a step 1 entry is still just 1 cent per point (on the face value!) which is what you get when cashing them in anyway.
Still didn't get the calculation part mostly, but I'll just trust you Thank's for taking the time to try to explain it at least.
But what do you guys think about the 100PP 2 seat qualifier for the Sunday $300k Guaranteed tournament? Is that wise investment? (in sense of learning and winning big)
Let's see... last one had 495 entrants, two entries to the 300k guaranteed could be argued to be a $430 prize pool, so that's less than a dollar to the prize pool per entrant. The only way of using party points worth talking about is the cash conversion option. You just get worse value and more variance by other means.
Hmm, sorry to butt in here but.. How do steps work exactly? You win cash from the highest ones or? Probably a stupid question but whatever, I wanna know lol
Step 6 pays cash, steps 1-5 only have entries into other steps as the prizes (and they can't be exchanged for cash or credit, this isn't stars).
