[ChrisV]

This talk of chess and bridge is a distraction. I know the bridge analogies stripsqueez is trying to make but there is no good analogy I can think of in chess.

I think stripsqueez is talking a bit abstractly about a point that can be made more simply. There are situations where you should make a play that is negative chip EV because it's positive $EV. These situations occur when you would rather have a shot at a big stack than be assured of a small stack, even if your average chip amount goes down by trying for the big stack. Commonly this occurs when the person stealing from you has a similar stack size and is your major rival. The steal therefore hurts you doubly, making a successful steal very damaging to your $EV. For example, if you have a stack of 700, post up 200 in blind, and are put all in. Even though you may not have pot odds to call, you might choose to call anyway if you think that your remaining stack of 500, posting 100 in SB, has almost no chance of getting you extra cash versus your rejuvenated opponent, whereas your winning stack of 1400 will crush your crippled opponent.

Another way of expressing it, and the way stripsqueez chose, is to say that your 500 remaining chips have higher value this hand than they will in subsequent hands. I think that's a bit of an abstract way of putting it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]