Step challenge at Party Poker

[Talking Poker]

I like your breakdown, but you didn't follo wit all the way through, and you are forgetting (failing to mention) one very significant factor:

You aren't allowed to "cash out" when you win. You have to keep on playing. Sure, a decent player will get to play for a while, and may move quit far up the ladder, but only 4 players are actually able to cash out. Yes, they get to cash out quite a bit of money, but everyone else goes home with nothing (Exception: the three people earlier on the chart who won $30 and $35).

So, let's look at the loser side of this, just for kicks... and we'll assume everyone starts at the $11 level (they won't, but we'll just talk in terms of an $11 entry fee)...

Ok, I started typing this all up, but it's freaking complicated With the players looping back to various steps, it's really hard to figure out how many people need to lose before starting a final table.

I guess the easiest way to think about it (although not exact) is that there is $20,000 in the prize pool. With a $10 entry fee to get things started, it's going to take 2000 players to fund that final table (this is not counting Party's cut along the way). And only 4 players win.