X-post from MTT

[Eihli]

This isn't my interpretation of giga's post. I'll wait untill he makes another post clearing it up or untill I get HoH2 to get a detailed explanation of that. But, this is something that crossed my mind while I was reading his post, and maybe it touches on some of what he was referring to.

In a 1-2 NL $200 max game, everyone says you should buy-in for the full $200. That way you can make as much possible when you get a hand to go all-in with. If you buy in for $50 and get AA and someone with $200 goes all-in preflop, then you've left a lot of money on the table.

The same idea applies to chips in a no-limit tournament. The "bold line" that giga talks about being the saturation of chips might be similar to the max buy-in of a NL cash game. If you have that number of chips, you won't be leaving chips on the table. Any number of chips over that amount can be used freely to accumulate more chips without worry that the loss of them would cause your future plays to be worth less than the maximum.

The reason this is so important in a tournament that it would cause you would take a -EV play in order to put yourself in this position is because with big blinds and short stacks, you will be in the same position as the guy who bought into a $200 max game with $50 and was all-in with AA preflop a lot more often. So often, that the chips you are leaving on the table by not having a big enough stack is greater than the chips you lose on average by taking the immediate -EV play.

I'm not saying this is something new or true and I'm not going to try to back it up any. I just wanted to see what other people had to say about this.