Tournament Strategy Question. . . .

[jwvdcw]

I play to make the money first. Then when I'm in the money, I play to make the big money(usually final table, but sometimes in bigger tourneys its earlier). Then when I'm in the big money, I play to move up one spot at a time.

Winning is really overrated. Plenty of people can make a living off of getting high non-first finishes regularly in tourneys imo.

[RFJ]

Of coure i'm not saying survival is the only thing.. If your have good hands then your going to play them strong. You can't worry about bad beats and such. i'm just saying i'm not into those people where everyone 3 people or more have pushed all in and you still go all in with a pair of 3's hoping to get lucky when everyone has you covered. That to me is just stupid. When i say survivial i mean i'm not going to play with inferior cards just to get lucky once in a long while. You of course need a stack to get to the final table, but when the cards just don't come early on what are you going to do push all in with some garbage? If your on a tight table you might get lucky once and steal the blinds, but if you on a loose table or someone gets a great hand your dead either way. Why not get into the money first and then take it from there. There is a reason why the chip leader within 30 minutes of the game is never the chipleader near the end. Many of the chip leaders early on in the tournament are really loose player or they are skilled, but had an awesome stroke of luck. You cannot get a 4x lead over the whole table without it. They either gave someone a bad beat to take the lead or too many loose players didn't believe he had the hand so just gave him the chips. Either way when the tournment comes near the end where there are fewer weak players and more quality players it's going to be more difficult to get lucky playing with garbage.

[RFJ]

If you want to talk about mathmatics let's talk about math.. Ok yes chip stack 4000 to 1000 that's 4x the lead which is a good thing. But let's just check how u get there. In order get a lead like that you need to first analyze the percentage per hand. AA vs KK or AK.. Do the math. AA vs any 2 cards with 2 people or 3 or more. Math doesn't start with stack vs stack. It starts with hand vs hand first in this game. If your lucky enough your hand would be the best hand to give you the desired stack