Tournament chips, making "odds based" decisions

Hi all, this is my first post.

I have read most of the books.
I am about halfway through Harrington Vol2, although I haven't read 100% of Vol1 yet (loaned it to a friend).

Harrington advises many decisions made based on pot odds and such.

But, when playing in a tournament, at what points do you decide to take a -EV action because it preserves your stack?

For example, in part 9 "Structured Hand Analysis", he uses an example of going all in with T8o, and calculates an all-in EV of +t1865 on the action, on our stack of t90000.

I am pretty tight. I worry that I am too tight. In most situations, if I calculate that my all-in is only worth about +2% of my stack size, I will fold. My personal cutoff is more like a little bit under +10% EV.

Anyway, I prefer to fold in Harrington's example, even though it is +EV. I think most will agree that you should fold if your all-in is +t1 EV on a t100k stack, right?

So what's the cutoff? Am I too tight?

[Vex]

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So what's the cutoff? Am I too tight?

[/ QUOTE ]

Tournament chips have variable value. The more you have, the less each is worth individually.

Tournaments are about survival. To win a tournament, you only have to bust one other player.

Early on in the game, you should be loath to put your entire stack at risk unless you know you are a heavy favorite. There's no sense in racing for chips when a lost race will break you or cripple you. If you are constantly taking coin flips, you are just gambling. The chips you win now will have far less value down the road.

Say you double up twice in the first four rounds by racing, giving you four times the average stack. Now suppose you just tread water until 3/4 of the field is eliminated. At that point, you'll have risked a 75% or so chance of elimination, just to be on an average stack, at a time where half the remaining field still need to bust out before you're approaching the bubble.

You want to grow your stack slowly and steadily, double up off the occasional gambler, and generally stick with it until the end. Try to have a decent stack as the bubble approaches. Then it's time for easy pickings; shorter stacks will be desperate to double up, meaning you have ample opportunities to take all their chips. Choose your targets based on how bad they can hurt you. Remember, it's a freezeout. After the bubble, play becomes very straightforward, and doesn't get tricky again until the game gets shorthanded.

It makes sense to evaluate plays in terms of pot odds, but don't push the thin edges. You have to remember that your currency -- the chips in your stack -- is constantly inflating throughout the tourney. Think of your stack in terms of the number of major mistakes you can survive, not in terms of actual chip numbers. The more chips you have, the less value each individual chip has -- being able to survive three lost races isn't that much better than being able to survive two, especially considering that in another half hour those same chips will have significantly less value.