I will be playing in the WSOP.com bracelet events starting July 1st and noticed you start with 20,000 chips with 15 minute levels starting at 25/50 blinds. I can’t even imagine playing this deep online. It seems like some good pros could really crush in these easy levels because if they put on a lot of pressure on any street you will have to fold anything but the nuts.

A few other questions:
How to play AA, KK, QQ or AK preflop this dee?

Do these levels even really matter? Ie. is there really much difference in the tourney prospects between one player who grinds up to 23,000 in the first two hours. vs. someone who folds for two hours straight?

Should I consider late registering? I probably have a -50% or so ROI in these but I’m not sure which stages the bad players lose the most of their edge during

Not much, but it can be a good opportunity to chip up.

I'm really not a pro, but I've played several live low-stakes WSOP bracelet events that attracted huge fields and started very deep. My sense is that high card type hands (i.e. AK, AQ, KQ) have reduced value in deep-stacked poker whereas hands that have strong nutted possibilities (i.e. suited connectors, suited aces, pocket pairs) are desirable for the chance of making a monster.

The old adage "never go broke with just one pair" doesn't always apply in poker, but is generally pretty good advice when you are super deep vs. randos. For example, AK is a snap shove on 15BB, but you don't want to be sticking 200BB in there with it. Likewise, if you flop TPTK with AK or AQ, it isn't necessarily worth your whole stack.

So I would say play more of a cautious/pot control style with your single pair hands. That doesn't mean you want to "trap" with stuff like AK or AQ. You still want to raise and isolate, and try to win the pot. But you have to be ready to release if you sense strength. Live to fight another day.

The flipside is that if you hit the world with a disguised two pair, set, or flush, you can extract a lot of chips from other novice players who are incapable of getting away from their AA, TPTK, etc. Because most casuals don't really understand how stack size should influence their decision-making, so they will sometimes put a lot of chips in there early in a tournament against certain lines where they should be laying down just about everything except the nuts.

if u think u got a good hand........ go "ALL IN"

Thanks so much for the great reply! Now two hours in and I have a slightly above average stack. Basically, I did nothing fancy and eventually hit a set and won a big pot. Now suddenly we're all at around 100 BB!

As is the case in your example tournament, 'deep' is in the eye of the beholder. Lots of Players don't mess around with the early levels since they don't want to just be involved with coolers. Other want the opportunity to apply pressure and/or flip their way to a dominating stack.

In a turbo it really comes down to the structure. Sometimes you need to double up every 2 orbits or you are losing ground.

If you are comfortable mixing it up, then playing deep can be a very good hunting ground. But in general you really do need to be more aware of pot control and limiting your River aggression .. least you open a door you can't walk through by going for thin value and then facing a raise you can't call. GL