Chip Flow

There have been things written before about the change in table dynamics when chips flow from one player to another in poker.  The fundamental changes that can occur is direct correlation to the finite numbers of chips within a poker tournament.  

In cash games, if a player is doubled, while it may eventually change the dynamics of the table slightly, by allowing one player to play slightly deeper, the general layout of the table remains the same. 

However, in tournament poker, since you are giving a specific number of chips at the outset, in conjunction with raising blinds and fluctuating stack sizes, the flow of chips from one player to another becomes increasingly significant. 

The picture above shows us, the “Hero” residing in seat 8 of a 9 handed table.  The red arrows signify chip flow which is poor for us and the green arrows signify chip flow which is beneficial for us.  It should be fairly straight forward to most of you that the bigger the stacks on your left are the less beneficial it is to you, as they can more easily reraise your opens, or call behind in position for a much smaller price relative to their stack.  As you can see here, when chips flow in front of us it is considered good; we will act after these players and can plan accordingly to attempt to procure these chips ourselves.  On the other hand, when chips flow past us to seats 9 and 1, it becomes harder and harder to play as the big stacks play after us on almost all hands and when we are in late position we have players with more chips playing in the blinds, thus increasing the percentage which we are going to get repopped on blind steals and light opens. 

So what does this information really mean?

While you should intuitively have understood this aspect of the game, it is also something which players generally ignore when actually at the table, myself included.  It is easy to get lost in the math and statistics of poker in the heat of the moment and to forget the repercussions of our actions in a given hand.  A poker tournament reminds me a lot of a scientific definition for the term inertia; “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”  By this I simply mean that every chip that is passed around a poker table fundamentally changes the dynamic of that table so when you are faced with a borderline call of a raise or a borderline spot to reraise you should always think of what will happen if you fold, call, or raise and what the results of each will do to change the dynamics of the table.  I am much more likely to call a reraise from a player to my right then I am to call one of a player on my left.  Why you ask?  It's simple.  I would rather have my chips on my right then on my left because I want to act after the players who have the most chips and are thus, the most dangerous.  These are the kinds of things you need to intuitively understand to make the jump from good tournament player to excellent tournament player as it will help you make the right decisions in many of the marginal spots you find yourself when playing relatively shortstacked, as poker tournaments usually are.