Accumulation Tournament Twist

I played in an accumulation tournament in which each player plays 2 sessions of 20 hands each. Bank roll is 2000 for each session and no max bet. No other rounds. The highest 20 scores win according to their ranks. The twist is the scores for the second round are doubled. So, if you end up with 100 chip of first round and 200 chips of second round, now your score will be 500 chips. I was trying to calculated strategy to play for a target bankroll (using Wong method) but the doubling of the second round score was confounding factor. I did make a calculation assuming a 6000 bankroll (2000 for first session and 2000X2 for second session). Not sure if it was the optimal calculation. Also, I assumed to be more aggressive in second session because of more reward of doubling the score. Any thoughts.

 

Mathematically, the second session is equivalent to starting out with twice the bankroll and betting twice as much as your actual bets, except that you conceptually bust out if you've lost the original bankroll. For example, with a starting bankroll of 2000:

• If you win 1000 during the session you end up with 3000 x 2 = 6000, which is the same as starting with 4000 and winning 2000.
• If you lose 1000 during the session, you end up with 1000 x 2 = 2000, which is the same as starting with 4000 and losing 2000.
• If you lose 2000, you're done. Your artificially inflated bankroll does not save you here.

Wong's formula assumes a typical distribution of results for the tournament round as a whole (both sessions). The adjustment you need to make is to give the second session twice as much weight as the first. We only need to be concerned with the distribution of winning results. So if the goal according to Wong is 20,000, then assume 10,000 per session and then adjust the final goal to 10,000 + 2x10,000 = 30,000.

Even better than Wong's formula, if this event has been run before, is to do some schmoozing among the locals and the tournament staff before hand to find out what the typical advancing threshold is. It's amazing how willing people are to help you if you come across as a little bit clueless.

In either case, once you have your final goal, the strategy is the usual one. Bet max (all-in) until you've reached the goal or bust out. There are a couple of twists here as well.

• During the first session, remember that you will be given a new bankroll for the second session which will be doubled if you simply hang on to it (i.e. if you bet the minimum)
• During the second session, remember that you have your total from the first session and double the amount of chips in front of you.
• When within a small amount of your goal in the second session, remember that you only need to bet half as much to get there.

One final bit of advice. If they post the interim scores between sessions, it is wise to make adjustments to your goal if necessary. In this case give the second session twice as much weight as you normally would. For example, one reasonable approach would be to set a final goal of twice the cutoff from the first session plus some cushion. In this case, I would make it 3 times plus some cushion.

 

Thanks Gronbog. I assumed the bank roll is 6000 and estimated the number of people in tournament based on tables to be 288. So, I figured to be ranked 10th place, one will need about 32,000. Interestingly, I later found out that the 10th place had a score of 31,900 !

 

Sounds like you got it right. Nice work!