This is a live satellite to the WSOP Main next year. 36 player payed $1200 to enter. We play a series of semi fast structured tournaments for points, the person with the most points at the end of 10 tournaments wins a seat and travel package. Players 2-10 play a 9 handed SNG where two more seats are handed out. The starting chip stacks at the final game where the two packages are payed out are determined by points.

The structure for each individual tournament is 1 point for getting knocked out first and 36 points for winning (a single point increase). This seems to imply that we should play very conservatively due to the flatness of the point "payout". However you can also look at this as a Winner Take All since first receives a package. This shouldn't be correct since there are two more packages to be payed out though. The way I've recently been thinking about it is this: 1st receives 12k and player 2-10 receive some share of 24k. If their share were equal places 2-10 would pay out roughly 2.66k, but we know that each players equity share will be altered based on their chip stack. I don't think it's likely that anyone will be able to ascertain more than 4k worth of equity here (chips to points conversion is somewhat conservative as everyone starts with a decent starting stack).

I'm primarily thinking about this as a top heavy tournament which inclines me to play aggressively in general. I imagine that if I were in place 7-10 during the final tournament I would want to play more conservatively to ensure I "make the money" whereas if I were in 2-4th I would be more inclined to gamble and try to make the top spot since falling down to 7th won't hurt my equity too dramatically.

I would love to hear the thoughts of skilled tournament players with regards to adjusting to this structure. I am currently 10th with 6 tournaments left to go, 1st place is 36 points ahead of me. It's also important to note that I play 2kNL online and almost everyone in the tournament couldn't beat 1-2 live. It is also quite likely that at least half the players 9-2 will punt sometime in the coming weeks. The current leader is a former SNG player on Stars and while he is not particularly strong or creative, he certainly isn't going to give it away and clearly has a massive edge on the field in general.