The Escalating Blinds

In tournament poker, you can't buy more chips at any old time. Unless it's during a tournament's rebuy period, once your chips are gone, so are you.

If the blinds and antes did not escalate at fixed intervals, tournaments would take days to complete. After all, most players would wait for outstanding hands before entering a pot. And what fun would that be? It would make poker the equivalent of watching paint dry, and nobody wants that. Because blinds and antes escalate, one is forced to play.

When a player's, chips have been depleted, and they will be facing the blind in a hand or two, it may be the best course of action for them to go all in with as little as ace-anything (an ace plus whatever else is in the hand). After all, if he or she doesn't, they will have to risk going all-in with the random cards they receive in the blind. In the early stages of a poker tournament, the structure is similar to a cash game. Suppose 200 players buy into a tournament and each receives $500 in chips.

The betting limits during the first round might be $15-$30. Under these conditions, if a player flops a four flush (four cards of the same suit), you can afford to take the chance and draw for it. In the later stages of a tourney, however, taking such a chance often isn't worth the risk. Suppose you are one of the last eight remaining p1ayers: Since 200 players bought in initially, there was $100,000 in tournament chips in play. If you divide that equally among the remaining eight players, the par value is $12,500. In other words, if a player has precisely $12,500 at this stage of the tournament, he is average by definition.