Commerce Classic - Multiple Bag Format

I haven't seriously analyzed this format, but it seems like a major incentive to fire more bullets if you bag with a short stack.

If the ICM value of your bag is worth less than $6k, then by bagging again you still have all the upside you would normally have, plus you win a bonus of:

Bonus $ Gained= 6, 000- Your Prior Bag's ICM Value

A very short stack might only have something like a $3, 500 ICM value, so by bagging again you could increase that by $2, 500!

The value is being transferred from people who only bag once to people who bag multiple times.

Wait, that's not tracking for me. The ICM value of your first bag can't be less than $6k if that's the minimum payout. If you bag again, you get $6k, but you have to surrender your smaller stack. When you surrender chips, you're surrendering equity in the tournament. That equity is distributed to the remaining players. In this case, you're both the player surrendering and one of the players gaining, but since you're sharing it you're actually coming out behind.

Or look at it this way: would rather stake 1 player who bags 4 times, or 4 players who all bag once? The chances of the 1 player having a monster are no better than the chances that one of the other 4 have one, so why wouldn't you want to have 4 players still in the running to ladder up and possibly win?

This is not to say that it's a total losing proposition to re-enter after bagging, especially if your bag is pretty small. In that case you're not surrendering too much equity should you find another bag. If, on the other hand, you've bagged a decent stack, then you'd be much better off using your bankroll to enter other tournaments than firing any more bullets at this one.

Commerce was very smart to structure the payouts with a very high min cash, as it highly encourages players to play for the min cash, which means there will be a lot of short stacks after the bubble bursts, and a lot of those players will indeed enter another flight, along with the 90% who didn't cash at all.

Ignore what I wrote before.

You didn't say $6, 000 was a min cash in your original post. I was assuming a min cash was a more standard 2 thousand something dollars for a $1200 tournament.

If you just get a min cash for your surrendered bags, then the people surrendering bags are the ones giving up equity. In that case a small bag might have $8, 000 ICM value, and they're losing the chance to ladder and thus giving up the extra $2, 000 in equity by surrendering. So it's not really in their best interest to enter again if they already bagged. That is unless their skill advantage is so great that they can generate more EV by bagging again with a bigger bag than what they give up by surrendering a bag, which is unlikely.

This sort of format can also create incentives for collusion. I won't get into the details of that, but other people have written about it. Sometimes if someone has already bagged, it gives them incentive to dump chips to their buddies who haven't bagged yet. If they're going to be surrendering their stack anyway they only need to cash with 1 chip.

I wasn't the OP, but I did look at the structure sheet for this event. It just says "Players that double bag (or double qualify) will receive $6000 minimum payout the same day and the larger chip stack is used for Day 2". It doesn't specify whether the payout for your first bag is actually smaller, but I would assume if that was the case they'd specify that. It would seem strange if you got bonus money for a second bag, but if that is the case then your original assessment is spot on.

In any case, yeah, I can see how the format could lead to chip dumping concerns, and I don't think I'd bother with a re-entry in this format unless I bagged less than maybe 8 BB.

Paying significantly more than a mincash for additional bags would definitely increase the repeat entries! I was thinking that was what they were doing. I'm surprised no one (that I'm aware of) has tried that yet, in the neverending quest to increase rake generated. Even if it does so at the expense of players entering once, it's not that much different than when venues give away tickets to future events, with the cost subtracted from the prize pool. Anyway I have no intention of attending this series, and didn't look closely enough before jumping to conclusions.