Should players in the beginning stages play tighter to avoid all in confrontations? Hence, the must of a bias against confrontation? is doubling up early worse than doubling up later? and is there another way of assessing tournament chip stacks then ICM

I dont think were trying to avoid confrontation at all. Actually in the earlier stages I welcome it cause Im only playing the top hands. In the later stages its almost like were placing the confrontation on our opponents when they dont want it and putting a lot of pressure on their shoulders.

I think its more exciting to double up later but as far as strategy goes, you could make an argument for each way.

And I dont use it or actually Ive never looked into it but theres this thing called M that some people use. Like I said though, I dont know much about it but im sure other people on here do.

There is a bias against confrontation early for the reason that if you double up first hand you dont actually double your equity. Say you start with 2k chips in a 10+1 sng and you double first hand your equity only improves from the original $10 to $18.4 or something like that so you often need to be a 54-55% favourite when getting it allin.

Your chips lose value as the sng goes on, if you had 5 players left each with 4k chips, a double up there improves your equity from $20 to $33.

Im sure someone else can put it better than me but thats the general idea.

hmm well wouldnt common sense which im sure can be converted to mathematical sense would say you are giving up postive expectation for future ones which isnt guaranteed? And also, doesnt the field of players get better overall so it makes it harder to find profitable situations in the late stages of the tournament especially with the increasing blinds? And also, wouldnt that be neglecting skill? Isnt individual skill chip equity a huge portion that should not be neglected but skill equity should be maximized early on especially since you cant apply it as much in the later stages? And isnt that just easily exploitable by an opponent to play such a strategy? I thought your chances of winning were = to stack size adjusted for skill so wouldnt it jsut make sense to double up early to increase your chances of winning? I dont know just doesnt seem like sense the way to play extremely super tight in the beginning and avoid confrontation. From a logical standpoint it doesnt.
I am looking to convert this to mathematical sense and really test my intuition. Something doesnt smell right. I hear a lot of play super tight only premium hands avoid all ins but with no mathematical sense behind it. I know short stacks do have value that are taken rom the bigger stacks but I dno if i agree with the play premium hands avoid all ins and all of that stuff. Theres two sides to a story guess i gotta figure out the other one to make an informed decision. Id really prefer mathematical sense.

The mathematical sense is ICM.

Try reading ChrisV's Partial SNG Book, plenty of math in the "bias against confrontation" section.

Catapult gave a decent enough resopnse for you putting it in laymans terms. Basically you can loosen up early if you think you are a better player than the rest of the table BUT getting involved in a lot of pots early, stealing blinds is not going to increase your tournament equity. Because everyone else will be playing mostly correctly (like nits), the blinds you steal are negligable (spelling??) in relation to the times you get stuck in hands up against everyone elses ranges AQ+, 99+ (obv not set at this but you get the gist) you are going to run into trouble spewing off a whole lot of chips. You can't outplay the top hands when they are being played hard and fast early no matter how good you are postflop.

This is especially true once people find out how loose your ranges are early they will be making you pay to get to a flop, and you will be flushign you EV down the drain.

You are not wanting to avoid confrontation early when you are a 80-20 favourite because your tournament EV is greater (quite substantially) than the EV that you lose if you bust out, given that you will only be losing 1 in 5.

Basically the game has been solved to a fairly high degree, you're not revolutionizing anything here. Sorry to break it to you

Playing tighter is generally righter

Perhaps it's wrong to say All in confrontations should be avoided per se, if an all in is +EV then it's +EV.

Increasing your stack is never bad I dont think.

Doubling up early doesn't double your tournament equity,
ICM wise. But ICM doesn't consider the value of bubble
abuse when you have a big stack .
Maybe bubble abuse isn't important on $10 SNGs
(where people make bad calls), but on higher buyins this
can add plenty to your equity.

Read that thanks!!

Yes agreed but you have to be able to put enough hands into thier range to be able to make it +EV so that your not actually flipping as it were, dont you?

Quite probably, but you still dont need to be flipping when you have a skill advantage, you still need to know that oppo will get it AI with enough hands to make it so that you are on average better than the 55/45 that you need to be.
You are probably right about the difference in BI because they dont know or respect pwnage, today I shoved on 2nd stack 5 handed from sb, he was clear 2nd stack and the others had less than 2.5bb each, and he called w/QJo?? So I accept your point about BI. But how can you quantify the value of bubble abuse?