[M.B.E.]

[ QUOTE ]
For any # of players of equal ability, your chance of first is equal to your fraction of the total chips.

[/ QUOTE ]

What is the proof for this statement, in the abstract? Sklansky discusses two approaches to a proof at TPFAP pp. 104-06, for the two-player situation, but I don't find them compelling.

It is the conventional wisdom, but I'm not persuaded that it's true, especially for more than two players. For example, it seems to me that if there are three players left, all good tournament players and equally skilled, and I have 10% of the chips while my opponents have 45% each, then my chance of winning is probably less than 10%.

But in this age of online poker, we don't have to rely on theoretical arguments. It should be possible to do a rigorous study, using statistical methods, of a large enough sample of sit-n-go tournaments at some online site, to assess whether the conventional wisdom is borne out.