[Nate tha' Great]

The blinds are 50/100 in a typical NLHE MTT. A middle position player who is a bit on the loose side has T3000 behind and raises to T250. It's folded to me on the Button with 55.

Now, if I have T1500, I probably need to fold this. But if I have T3000 myself, I can probably expect some profit from a call, hoping to stack him if I flop a set. Also, I have enough of a stack to do something like reraise preflop and fold to a push, or raise on a ragged flop and fold to a push, which might be attractive if my table image is strong and he plays predictably.

This might or might not be a good example; I am far from a NLHE tournament expert. But it seems pretty indisputable that a proportionately larger stack gives you proportionately more options, necessarily including proportionately more +EV options. Another very obvious example is the ability to steal blinds during the bubble period. We can refer to this as "flexibility".

My question is how much this flexibility is worth, and how much it offsets the general principle that tournament chips decline in marginal utility.