Spiel bank casino in Berlin offers an MTT that allows you to select your starting stack of 10k chips for 66 euro, 15k chips for 88 euro, or 20k chips for 110 euro. 10% of buy in goes to the house. Single re-entry. 20 minute levels and blinds start at 25/50. Approximately 60 runners.

Any advice on which is the optimal starting stack selection?

Have you used a calculator yet? The answer is quite obvious...

If it's so obvious, then help me out mate. Or let me know how to sort it out. Cheers

By the way, Soepgroente, I can use a calculator to figure out the value of each chip at the start of the tourney. Not difficult, genius. I wanted to know, given all of the information on the structure of the tourney, if the additional info made a difference.

I suspect you don't know the answer, which is why you didn't offer one. Go back in your hole.

Seems like a no-brainer max buyin.

Why max buy-in?

By dividing the buy-in by the number of chips in the starting stack, the max chip value at the start of the tournament - among the 3 options - is the 66 Euro option.

Buy-in/Starting Stack = Chip Value

66 Euro/10,000 = 0.0066
88 Euro/15,000 = 0.00587
110 Euro/20,000 = 0.0055

Nevertheless, considering that the structure starts at 25/50 blinds for 20 minute levels, it is possible that the beginning chip value is not optimal. Consider if it cost 1 Euro to get a starting stack of 100 chips and this was an option. The math would actually favor this option, but the reality is that you would be starting a tourney with 2 big blinds.

Is starting stack in relation to buy-in the only thing to consider here? Or are there other factors in play? Thanks.

Sorry if I seemed rude. Your chip values don't change, so in your calculation a lower chip value is better (as you bought it for less).

10000/66 gives you 150 chips per €, 15000/88 gives you 170 chips per € and 20000/110 gives you 181 chips per €. I don't foresee ICM being enough of a counterfeit to undo the better price, and if you're a good player having a deeper stack has advantages as well. Buying 100 chips for 1€ would be a really terrible price (the same as 100€ for 10,000), though it might not be that bad because being a super short stack has a large advantage.

But yeah, buy the biggest stack, it's the most value and the most playable/least variance.

66 and 110 are probably very close in value. ICM and depreciating value of chips matter enough for it to be a significant difference.

Not close at all actually.

Assuming 59 others bought in for 10k chips and some random reasonably flat payout structure with 9 players paid:

ICM value of 10k buyin obv $60
ICM value of 20k buyin $116.84 (ICM values of all other stacks ~$59.70)


(might contain errors as it's getting late)

Thanks for all of the help guys. I thought I was not seeing something, so I appreciate the advice. Cheers!

What's the re entry cost/chips? Don't see how soep logic is wrong for starter