The survivor contests are an exciting and unique format that differ from your standard cash game and large field tournaments. The goal of the survivor is to advance every week until you reach the final week where it turns into a small GPP for big money. This article will discuss strategy for the 2 phases of survivor play, the 50/50 phase and the GPP final day.
Survivor Strategies for the 50/50 Phase
1. Treat The Survivor Like a Cash Game
When 50% of the field advances, it’s a 50/50 with a fancy name; many people however view these as tournaments and put risky GPP lineups in them. However, there is no upside if you finish 1st or take the last spot in the top 50%, you move on the same so if you play your cash lineup you’ll see 2 benefits.
- Your cash guys will be lower owned because of people inserting tournament teams
- The amount of points required to advance typically will be lower than your 50/50 due to the higher risk lineups that will fall short.
2. Run Trains on the Early Days in the small buy-in Survivors
One reason that lots of people end up putting GPP teams into Survivors is because they want to have lots of teams in the field (to try and make the final day), but the optimal way to do it is to run a train (which means enter the same team multiple times) of your cash game teams. While this adds risk when your teams don’t advance, most of the time your cash teams will advance which gives you more chances to advance to phase 2, which is a small GPP which huge GPP prizes. While in the beginning it’s a 50/50, the survivors have a GPP payout structure so eventually you have to have chances to win the GPP and all the big money, so the more teams you have on that final day the better.
3. Make Sure You Fill Out Your Teams Every Week
This seems obvious but last year between the 1st and 2nd week in the survivor, 5% of the field forgot to fill-out their teams. This is obviously dead money and added value for you if you remember to fill out your teams. What I do is put in a dummy lineup as soon as I see the tickets in my upcoming tab, that way no matter what happens I don’t have a dead team.
Survivor Strategies for the GPP Phase
1. This Phase is a GPP, You have to Play to Win
As opposed to the 50/50 phase where you are playing to advance, you need to play this phase to win. In past survivors, I’ve noticed that people that make the final day don’t make the adjustment and play a safe lineup which isn’t optimal because all the money is in winning the tournament! Also, I’ve seen people train on the final day as well. While training is a viable strategy on the early days on the final day all the money is at the top, so by differentiating your lineups, you maximize the chances of you winning!
2. While it’s a GPP with huge payouts up top, remember the field size is smaller than your normal GPP
This is the most important part of playing survivors. While the final day is a GPP, the field size is much smaller than normal. If you have four 50/50 days, you only have 6% of the field left on the final day. So for example, if the Survivor was a $5 500k with 100,000 players, you would only have 6,000 left on the final day. So instead of having to beat 99,999 players like a normal $5 500k GPP, you only have to beat 5,999. The point in this is that you don’t have to make crazy lineups. While you want to have a couple of low owned players, you don’t have to go contrarian in every single spot to win.
For baseball, there was a survivor variant in which only 25% of the field advanced each day before the final GPP day. If that format makes a resurgence, then you should treat it like a GPP each day (and use BR rules as if it’s a GPP and not a cash game), and not train in the early days.
I love the survivor tournaments every year and can’t wait for their return! If you follow these strategies, I firmly believe that survivor tournaments will become your favorite too!
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