What Should I Be Aiming For?

C

Capital_D

New Member
Tournament newbie here with a quick question. I'm entered in a tournament where there are 150 players and 50 of those players progress to the semifinals. You aren't playing against your own table in the perliminary round, you're playing against the entire field, blind. Based on your experience, and given $1000 in starting chips and only 20 hands to play, what size stack do you think would progress to the semifinal?

Thanks for your input.

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Capital_D
 
Shoot for....

With 150 players I would shoot to triple your money (3,000) that should put you in the top 1/3 of the pack. If you should get a run going I wouldn't push it passed $3,500 - 4,000 (Why, you don't need to). All you want is to make the top 1/3 to make the semi's. Try to play in a later round, that way you can watch the first round to gauge the total to shoot for.

Don't be shy betting, the chips are gone either way after your round. Go for it you will either make it or bust out trying (exception if the early rounds have low totals, then you can slow it down in your round).

Good luck, let us know how you do.
 
I say double is enough

I'll have to mildly disagree with Tx here. Tripling your money when 1/3 of the field advances is overkill. I'd venture a guess and say that doubling it should suffice. My official over/under for the cutoff is $1800.

Please post after the event, and let us know.
 
Wong

If I remember correctly, Wong's formula is sqrt of 150/50 x BR. In this case, the magic number is 1733. Depending on the field, it may be considerably lower than that. I'll guess that 1500 will do. I once played in a format where half advanced and the original BR made the cut (lucky for me).
 
We'll See...

Well I'm really pressing the over/under here, but my grand total turned out to be... $1800! I feel better, though, given that 4 of the 6 people at my table busted out. The only other guy with chips seemed like an experienced tournament guy who ended up with $1750. I'll post a final update later on whether I advanced, and if so, how things proceeded from there. Thanks for your input, guys.
 
Listen to Ken & Walt

Capital_D, listen to Ken and Walt they have played in more accumulative format tournaments then I have. From what you said sounds like they were right on the money around 1,800. Good luck with your 1,800 let us know how it goes.
 
My recent experience

I just played in one over the weekend. Each start with $1000 in chips. Top 49 from the preliminary and rebuy rounds advances. Using SW's formula, I estimated that I needed to go from 1000 to 1900 to advance. Well, I made the mistake of not adjusting and lowering the target after watching the first two sessions played where the dealer was hot. Actually, I did not know how much to adjust. Do I shoot for the 20th score at that time. Do I shoot for the 25th score. Etc.

Well, I played my round. I got the BR to about 1500. I then zeroed-out after trying to reach the targeted number.

What's great about this tournament is that they post the scores before the rebuy round. At that time, 800 was the 49th score!

To make a long story short, I played the rebuy round and also zeroed-out. After the rebuy round, the 49th score was 1250.

Any comments are how to adjust the target score if one plays in the last session?
 
How Much?

I think the key here is, the ratio of players advancing. You didn't say how many players were in the field. As a rule of thumb, and I've only been in this situation once, if half the field advances, I only want to maintain or slightly increase the bank. The quality of players is a major consideration as well. If this is a rare format for the area, most of the players won't know how to bet and the target number can be lowered considerably. Don't try this at Bally's, Tunica though. There you have to inflate the "Wong number".
 
Each player started with 1000 in chips. The betting limits were $20 to no limit. It was 20 hands, 1D, DOA, DAS, BJ 2:1.

The tournament had three preliminary sessions and one rebuy session. The scores are posted after the preliminary sessions and before the rebuy session. The top 49 from all sessions advanced. I, of course, signed-up for the third session.

Session 1 had 42 players. Session 2 had 43 players. So, I estimated that there will be about 170 entrants and re-entrants. With 49 advancing, SW's formula suggested a target score of 1863.

I did not write down the scores. I did not want to look like I was an experienced tournament player. But, I did kept track of them mentally. I started by keeping track of the number of scores over 2000. Then, when the dealers were zeroing-out the players, I started keeping track of the number of scores over 1500. I estimated that before I started my session, the 20th score was 1500.

At this point, I probably should have lowered the target score to 1500. Would that have been right? But, I thought that the low scores were an abberation and that the next two sessions will make up for it. I got my score to about 1500 before my final progression to get to 1900 zeroed me out.

When the scores were posted, the 49th score was 800! The 28th score was 1500. The 32th score was 1375. The 34th score was 1250. The 40th score was 1000.

It's the rebuy session. And there are 33 re-entrants. What should I now be aiming for?
 
Wow, 49 of 170 advance, and $800 out an original $1000 did it? That's certainly an anomaly.

As for what the current goal should be, I'll assume that the 49 who advance will be the top from all three prelim sessions and the rebuy round combined, right?
That means you've got 33 people all shooting to dislodge some of the current 49 top spots, and they know exactly what those bankrolls are.

If I were in your spot, I'd be targeting $1400 or just over. But that number is not something I arrived at with a magic formula.

The dynamics of this format are interesting. If all 33 rebuys were to bet aggressively and target $1400, then a good rule of thumb is that 1000/1400 = 71% of them would succeed. That's 24 players who would succeed in moving up the ranks, and that would be a problem. But in real life, of those 33 you'll have some players that play poorly, and others that aren't aggressive enough. That's why I'm willing to water down my target to $1400.

Let us know what happens, and good luck!
 
So, I had a decision to make. There were 33 re-entrants, including me. What should I be aiming for? I figured the following.

Turn 1000 to 1500 = 67% success rate, will make cutoff
Turn 1000 to 1400 = 71% success rate, probably will make the cutoff
Turn 1000 to 1250 = 80% success rate, probably will not make the cutoff

I choose 1500 because I figured that I had to be at least 93% (1400/1500) certain that I would advance with 1400. I wasn't. As a general rule, it is better to aim just a little bit higher. One never wants to be a high-scoring, non-advancer.

Well, it turned out that it would not matter. I couldn't get a hand and never got above the original 1000. As for the 49th score, it ended up being 1250.
 
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