When should you not travel for a Day 2 and take the money instead?
You played an online leg of the WSOP Paradise Main Event and made Day 2 which is in the money. How big does your stack need to be to travel to the Bahamas?
This year's WSOP Paradise Main Event featured online Day 1s, where anyone who survived the day was automatically in the money for Day 2 in the Bahamas. The buy-in was $5,000 and the estimates are that a mincash will be around $8,000.
Travel and accommodation are not covered for players who make Day 2 via this route, which has led many players in our forum and in the GGPoker chat to question how much their stack is worth and, crucially, whether it is worth their travelling for Day 2?
If you have a big stack it is a no-brainer, but what about if you have a very short stack? Do you really want to travel all that way, spend money on travel, with four big blinds?
Thankfully I am an expert in this sort of ICM query, and by expert I mean I asked Dara O'Kearney.
How to work out the value of your stack
According to Dara the closest you can get to working out the value of your stack when the bubble has burst is to remove every mincash from the prize pool then chip chop what is left.
The $5,000 WSOP Paradise Main Event has a $15 million guarantee, so let's assume it just hits the 3,000 players needed. Then if 15% of the field makes the money, that is 450 players.
We guesstimated the mincash is $8,000, so 450 x $8,000 is $3.6 million, which we remove from the prize pool, leaving $11.4 million.
That would make an average stack worth $25,333. If you have double the average stack it will be worth roughly $50,000. If you have 1/10th of an average stack it will be worth around $2,500.
Then to calculate whether it is worth travelling, the cost of travelling to you personally has to be worth more than the value of your stack, minus the mincash.
A bucket list or an opportunity cost?
Day 2 of the Main Event starts on December 12 and the final day is December 14, you would probably want to arrive a day before and leave a day after so let's call it five days. So if the flight there and back costs you $1,500 and the hotel per night might be $250 x 5, the total cost of travel before food and other stuff is $2,750.
If you have an average stack worth $25,333 then it is a no-brainer to travel for Day 2, your equity is worth almost 10 times your costs. If you have 1/10th of the average stack worth $2,500, then travelling is not worth your time.
Of course, this is largely a personal question depending on your personal circumstances. If you live near the Bahamas it makes it much easier to justify, if it is the other side of the world for you with potential VISA issues and other regulatory headaches, perhaps not. If you have always wanted to go to the Bahamas this makes it a free holiday, if you have no desire to go there then you may need an even bigger stack than ICM dictates.
Travel hassle is also a factor, missing a connecting flight is very costly, busting early on Day 2 and then being stuck for three days is also an issue. Opportunity cost is an important consideration too. Is missing a few days of work or the online grind worth the equity you have in the Bahamas?
If you are an amateur who qualified online then you perhaps are happy with taking $8,000 as a great profit. If you are a streamer or YouTuber then maybe going to the Bahamas is good advertising for your channel.
One thing is for sure, it looks like there will be a few no-shows in the Bahamas on Day 2, which will make this a very good value tournament for those who show up on time with a couple of dead stacks at their first table. It might also make for an easy ladder to the next pay jump.
Still time to qualify
This year GGPoker are sending over 1,000 qualifiers to their WSOP Paradise event. The Main Event boasts a $15 million guarantee.
You can both qualify in $1,200 satellites as well as play the $5,300 OnLive Day 1s that we have discussed in today's article.
1,200 might be too rich for a lot of players, but the feeder satellites are also overlaying in some instances. There are regular $125 qualifiers to win a ticket to the $1,200 final, with feeders as low as $15. This is the current satellite structure:
| $10,000 WSOP Paradise Package |
| $1,200 Direct Qualifier |
| $125 Mega Satellite |
| $15 Mega Satellite |
An important point of consideration, however, is that an overlaying satellite has to go beyond late registration to guarantee the package. If the tournament ends before late registration the winner just takes down the collected prize pool instead.
You can play in satellites after winning a package, however winning a second satellite will only earn you T$5,000, not the full $10,000 package. You can see the full schedule for the GGPoker WSOP Paradise below:
| Dates/Events | Buy-In | GTE |
|---|---|---|
| Dec. 3 - Mystery Millions | $1,500 | $5,000,000 |
| Dec. 4 - MILLIONAIRE MAKER in Paradise [Final 100 – Final Day] | $1,500 | $5,000,000 |
| Dec. 5 - GGMillion$ High Rollers Championship | $25,000 | $10,000,000 |
| Dec. 5 - Mini Main Event No-Limit Hold'em | $1,000 | $1,000,000 |
| Dec. 7 - High Roller Pot-Limit Omaha | $25,000 | $2,000,000 |
| Dec. 7 - 6-Handed No-Limit Hold'em | $3,000 | $1,000,000 |
| Dec. 8 - Super High Roller No-Limit Hold'em | $50,000 | $2,000,000 |
| Dec. 8 - Mystery Bounty Pot-Limit Omaha [ONLINE] | $2,000 | $1,000,000 |
| Dec. 9 - Ultra High Roller No-Limit Hold'em | $100,000 | $5,000,000 |
| Dec. 9 - Main Event - NLHE Championship | $5,000 | $15,000,000 |
| Dec. 12 - Flip & Go $800 | $800 | |
| Dec. 13 - No-Limit Hold’em FREEZEOUT [ONLINE] | $1,000 | $1,000,000 |
| Dec. 13 - Pot-Limit Omaha Championship | $10,000 | $1,000,000 |
| Dec. 13 - The Closer [Turbo Bounty] | $2,000 | $1,000,000 |
| Dec. 14 - High Roller No-Limit Hold'em [6-Handed] | $10,000 | $1,000,000 |
How big would your stack need to be to travel across the world? Let us know in the comments:
