Hey all,

Looking for some insight into suggested strategy adjustments for the following league:

NLH, 20 min blind levels, (not sure of starting stacks but it’s probably around 200bb), bb ante from the start. ~ 20 players, 10 total tournaments.

At the end of the 10 tournaments, the top 3 players in points win a seat into a major tournament.

Point distribution is a follows:
20th place = 1pt
19th place = 2pts
18th place = 3pts….
1st place = 20pts

For each player you knock you also earn 1pt.

Interested to hear your thoughts

Thanks!

Not sure this format's incentives differ that significantly from a normal KO tourney structure; so I'd just play my normal KO tournament strategy. You should get to know the other players pretty well, so you can build an exploitive strategy from that -- just remember, though, the good players will be looking to exploit you too, so you should review in what ways your play can/is being exploited.

Thinking some more, I think the key difference is the "smoothness" of ICM in this format. In a typical 20-player MTT, only the top 2-3 get paid; so 20th through 3rd-4th are worth the same. Here, each and every ladder is worth a little extra. So I guess you tighten up some, since every hand is being played on a marginal bubble.

Seems like ICM would be less of a factor in this structure. For example there is no bubble and no real pay jump for reaching the final table. Everybody gets 1 more point when the last player busts to let everyone else reach the final table, but this is no more valuable than when 20th or 19th busts - it is just one more point added to your payout. Strategies involving ICM pressure, such as abusing short stacks near the bubble would seem to be irrelevant here. It’s a flatter structure with constant pay jumps so there is no point where moving up a spot is more or less valuable than at any other point. That is moving 15-14 is just as valuable as going from 2-1.

Practically this means that as a big stack you probably have less incentive to take risks to chip up, unless you have a decent chance of collecting the bounty point. Short stacks probably also can get away with less push/fold play and just try to hold on and hope for a couple of big stacks to tangle and have a larger stack bust.

bounties here are going to be less valuable than they are in most KO formats. The KO prize pool is 20pts, and the the regular prize pool is 1+2+3+...+20=210pts. less than 10% of the total prize pool in bounties


Most KO tourneys are going to have bounty prize pool between 25% up to 50% of the total prize pool.

The Top 3 winning a prize is going to make ICM interesting as you get to the later tournaments. you may be able to find ICM spots where a guy just needs a solid finish and can be bullied and you may find yourself in a spot where you need to win 2 in a row plus a bunch of KOs to get top 3 and just go crazy pf.

This is a great problem to test one's understanding of how ICM works.

My first thought was: This is a super heavy ICM tournament structure. Flat structures are usually and this is an extreme flat structure.

I used an ICM calculator. I only used 15 players since that is all that is available for free. The average stack at the beginning of the tournament is worth 7. If you double, your stack is now worth 9.67, plus the one point for the bounty, so you are risking 7 to win 3.67. Ignoring dead money from blinds/antes, this means you need to be about 65.6% to break even. This is about what the odds are for AKo vs a shoving range of any two cards.

Comparing that to a typical 15 person tournament with a normal prize pool, and you are instead risking 7 to win 6.43

The above calculations ignore FGS where you will be able to access other bounties, and have some cushion to do so even if you lose some pots. This effect is small, but non negligible. As was pointed out, the bounties are a small part of the overall prize pool.

This effect gets smaller as the tournament progresses (just as ICM at a FT goes down). In a 3 way spot, you need 60% to break even. Notice this means if we started with more than 15, the ICM pressure is even greater.

My advice, be super tight.

I think I messed up the calculations for the 3 way scenario.

At that point the effective prize pool is 5 (2,1,0 for the placings and 1,1 for the bounties).

Each player has 1 2/3 Equity. If two players get it all in, the third player will win a point for the ladder, and have a 1/3 chance of winning the remaining 2 points, so their equity remains unchanged. This means that the bounty and the ICM cancel exactly, and therefore the ICM premium is zero.

Apologies on the late reply. I appreciate all this advice! It’s interesting in a way because a few posts advised completely different things.

Based on my limited knowledge and general understanding of ICM, it seemed that playing tight in this tournament would be the correct strategy. I read moshman’s book a lonnggg time ago and remember it advocating for a much tighter style due to these icm implications. I think I may have to revisit this.

Thanks again for the support!

This tournament has more early ICM than any normal MTT. See my example where calling off with AKo vs ATC is more or less break even.

That has enormous implications for your strategy. Playing tight is just one of them. Another is keeping bet sizes small, and checking a lot for pot control. Another way to think about it is you want to protect your stack, not your pot equity.

Also note that as the tournament goes on, ICM goes down. Your opponents won't realize this, and will be playing too loose early on, but too tight late. As the tournament progresses, the bounties become more important relative to the prize pool, and they should be your focus when the table gets short.

I did 2 PIO sims. Hero Opens cutoff, Villain defends BB. SPR 10. Flop is Q94ssd.

For chip EV, this is a 2/3 cbet 63% of the time, 1/3 9% and check 28%

For ICM, those numbers become 0,99,1.

This shows the propensity to keep pots small, but at the same time keep some pressure on the BB's range.

I played a Horse version of this format. Slightly different as there are no bounties but some relatively small cash prizes for the top 5 of 36.

Some of the players were keenly aware of the ICM, even checking other tables far from the cash prizes.

I was in a strange spot since I was playing for a friend. I did well for her and got some of the money she free rolled me for the prize pool