I like your theory. I'm certainly no expert on this, but my instinct is that you want to focus more on chip accumulation than survival, early on anyway. When the blinds are but a fraction of your stack, I'm thinking looser player, seeing more cheap flops, etc, is ideal. You'll want to actually be TIGHTER postflop though, and not get yourself in trouble. If you could double up early, that's a huge advantage.
Keep in mind, less than 4% (approximately) of the field is going to cash. If you bust out 4000th or 400th, either way, you get nothing. Hell, 200th is nothing and that's going to be a lot harder to get to than 400th.
For me, I really want to have a nice stack for when we get down to that 400 plyaer level and everyone starts tightening up... that's when you can start playing more aggressively and open up your game. And hopefully by the time you are down to 200, you'll have enough chaip that you can walk away and coast into a seat. Nothing is worse (IMO) than being a short stack approaching a $12,000 bubble. I'd seriously rather bust out 4000th.
With all that said......... In two of the big satellites that I have won, I actually found myself somewhat short stacked to start (I lost about half my chips early on as I recall). After that, I ended up playing tight and very, very slowly building my stack. So that totally goes against everything I said above.
I do very much like this advice from the article:
Actually his list gets even better too, like so:
It should be noted though that this is advice for play approaching the bubble and NOT play early on.
Good article. Worth the read.
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