Beware: failure to understand how chip values vary in a freezeout tournament vs a cash game could cost you dear.
It sounds basic, but one of the hardest things to get to grips with for poker players moving from cash games into tournament play, is how the value of tournament chips is different.

When Greg (Fossilman) Raymer won the 2004 World Series of Poker he walked away with a cool $5,000,000, but he actually had over $25,000,000 in chips in front of him at end of play. The difference had, of course, gone to the other players who’d placed in the event – which perhaps illustrates why winning a tournament has jokingly been described as a bad beat in itself.

By contrast, if you make it into the money with only one chip left, that chip is worth much more that it’s cash value. Similarly, you might be familiar with the expression “a chip and a chair”, illustrated well by a famous story from the 1982 WSOP.

Jack (Treetops) Strauss moved in what he thought was his whole stack, only to be called and lose. But then as he was preparing to leave he found a chip concealed under a kink in the felt, from which he came back to win the entire event! [EDITOR’S comment: Really? The old kinky felt trick at WSOP level?]

In short then, because tournament players are paid by position, the more chips you have less each chip is worth individually, and the fewer you have, the more they are worth.

What this means in practice is that it’s actually correct to play very aggressively with a big stack to bully those players who are worries about getting knocked out (while you can’t be damaged too much), and to play extremely tightly with a short stack as your next hand could be your last, and you want to find something good to make a stand with.

Between these then are the middle stacks, who need to balance their play depending on what stack sizes they face, and try to build rather than be knocked down.

If you watch a poker tournament closely, you’ll be able to see these factors at work without much effort, and you’ll have learnt one of the principle dynamics of poker tournaments – good players play according to their stack size, as chips mean power!
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