I went back and looked at Wong's formula for estimating the required bankroll to advance in an accumulation tournament format. Applying his formula to the Goldstrike numbers you come up with a target of $31,600 to $33,000. I am assuming that his calculation is based on adding two rounds together. Here is the math: Square root of (Number of participating over number of advancing) times bankroll. If there were 350 participants and only 35 advance that gives you 10, square root of that is 3.162 times $5,000 equals $15,811 times two rounds equals $31,622. I think they actually had around 385, so the square root of 11 equals 3.316 which pushes the target to $33,166. I believe the actual cut turned out to be $31,115. Maybe we just set the target a hair to low at $30,000. Swog is right, it is better to shoot for the middle of the pack. I would guess that Wong's formula is to calculate the cutoff. Looks like the midpoint would be 1 1/2 max bet in addition to the cutoff. With two rounds, double it to three max bets. That would give you a midpoint target of $48,000. Setting your target with a 1 1/2 bet cushion gives you some room for error. In your mind, if you get near your target, you can still feel confident that you should make the cut if you fall one max bet short in a single round, or two max bets behind in two rounds combined. Or maybe the best way to set your target is to figure the minimum plus 1/2 max bet..... ???? Like Chuck says, it's a turkey shoot!
No Holy Grail When using Wong's formula, the thing to keep in mind is in the title of this thread: "Applying Wong's estimate in Accumulation Tournaments". Wong's formula produces an estimate and nothing more. Like any estimate, sometime it's high and sometime it's low. If one is looking for some HOLY GRAIL of accumulation BJ tournaments, than that person will be sadly disappointed. One more comment. ptaylorcpa wrote "I would guess that Wong's formula is to calculate the cutoff.". I don't believe this was Wong's intent nor does he ever say this in his book. I believe the formula produces a number to shoot for that will be enough to advance in most cases. Nothing more, nothing less.
Good point You are right Toolman, I think Wong assumes that if you apply his method of estimating that you should have a good chance of advancing. I think part of the problem with his estimate is that more players seem to know that in accumulation the objective requires several big bets to make it and more players are doing it and raising the bar. His book is dated, but still his theory still seems to hold some validity. I think part of the problem is when you have more than one round of accumulation you will see much higher scores than just doubling the score from round one. It is even worse when they allow a rebuy and you get to keep two out of three scores.
Adjust the formula result Absolutely! Wong also eludes to this in his book. Adjustments usually need to be made to Wong's square root answer based on circumstances at a particular tournament. But again, all you arrive at is an educated estimate. Hopefully, with experience, one's estimates will become a little more reliable.
Accumulation tournaments A few notes based on observations of over one hundred accumulation tournaments I played. Wongs square root is just a rough number to shoot for. There are many fine-tunings available. They will be based on bj rules, bet limits, number of rounds, and most importantly types of players participating with a subcategory: number of players “in the know”. An additional information becoming available during the tournament, like seeing a table with very high scores or seeing a list of scores after playing one or more rounds in multi-round format can be used for adjusting the goal number. The real advantage comes from estimating the cutoff figure as precisely as possible. For example, starting with 5K bankroll and playing two rounds, which has almost exactly the same chances as starting with 10K and playing just one round, and shooting for 35K while only 30K is needed reduces the chances of advancing from less than 33.3% to less than 28.5%. Correct estimate would increase our chances by a rather significant 16%. In some cases, especially when there is no bet limits, it is important to find how many times we need to win max bet and then find exact additional fraction of max bet, so losing that last step can be regained in a few hands and will leave us with no additional winnings, which would be similar to overshooting and reducing the optimal chances. In practice, it usually is a few max bets and then either half or third of max bet. With most players not being familiar with the goal score very often two thirds to three quarters of square root formula becomes the cutoff number. But when experienced players play in the tourney a higher score is needed. Also, with time a consensus number becomes established. Let’s say there are 350 novices playing, and 35 advancing. 2/3 of square root is 2.1 times of the bankroll. So, if you were the only advantage players, just slightly more than doubling your bankroll would be enough to advance. Now, let’s replace 50 novices with experienced players. They all shoot for the increase of their bankrolls 2.5 times. About forty percent of them succeed. That means 20 of them would have final score of 25K. Among the other 300 people twenty-one of them (according to the rule) would increase their bankroll by more than 2.5 times. [2/3 of sqrt 300/21 = 2.52] Only about fourteen of our experienced players would qualify, not all twenty. This is the effect of planned “unnaturally” higher scores pushing up the goal number. Being able to see the scores after playing one round allows us to make some adjustments. Double the score after one round of the desired place is guidance but usually people play more aggressively in the second round so a higher score may be needed. Also, it is helpful to look at the distribution of high scores, if there is a “bulge” in the upper half of advancing position – a higher score maybe needed. And lastly, there is a magic number of how much more than the cutoff should we shoot for. Usually about five to ten percent more than the deducted goal is enough. This is a tricky number to decide on. By increasing our goal by ten percent we are increasing the risk of busting by almost ten percent. Having a final score higher by ten percent has to protect us more than ten percent of the chances that we get to our score. So, we should go for 33K out of the original bankroll 10K that gives more than 95% chance of advancing instead of goal of 30K where there is only 85% chance of advancing. S. Yama
The recent Gold Strike tournament was an anomaly in my opinion. The 'half-time' number after round one was a mere $10,675. After round two, the cutoff had nearly tripled, to $31,000 or so. In all the times I have played this particular format, I've never seen a final to halftime ratio this high. For those interested in doing some calculations, the format was 35 advance from a field of 327 players. The bankroll was $5000, in each of two rounds. Scores were combined. 25 hands were played, 6 decks, H17. Many of the players in this event were new to the format, which led to the low first round numbers. However, an unusual number of players were highly successful in round two, which returned us to a pretty typical number for advancing. That would have been fine if many of us hadn't noticed the timid approach on most tables in the first round, and assumed the number would be lower than expected. And, in the first round, it definitely was.
Thank you for you insight and help in this matter. I truely believe that great posts like this and others, that provide useful and informative information may this site the premier BJ tourney site. Kuddos
Thanks Thanks, I wish I had more time to share my bj tournament experiences. It is a truly nice community here. S. Yama
Account for the uninformed How true this sentence is. This is the mistake I made when playing at the Sheridan (Tunica) for a seat in Harrah's Millionaire Maker. I overestimated the bankroll needed to advance. I estimated $1,800 to $2,000 would do the trick but did not reduce my estimate because of the number of uninformed players. I got up to $1,600 then all went South and I busted out. The cutoff point turned out to be $1,100. I was shocked that it was so low - I stared at the board for about a minute because I couldn't believe my eyes. Just have to do a better job the next time.
You're All Wong Swog had the best stategy to beat the accumulation format. For those of us who can't take squre roots, just get "drawd" into the final table. By the way although its a turkey shoot they don't even let you eat the turkey.
