Art of War Applied to Chip Stacks
“If our forces are 10 to the enemies 1…surround him”
Maintaining and building a large chip advantage requires that you make adjustments to your decision-making. If your chip advantage is 10 to 1, your opponent is posing no immediate threat to you. However, victory would also be of no great feat. Your relative chip position with regards to your other opponents would not change significantly if you were victorious.
This does not mean that acquiring those additional chips would not be beneficial. But to exhaust one’s self and direct one’s efforts towards victory against an opponent such as this, would likely prove to be detrimental. In the course of pursuing an opponent with such a small chip stack, you will be exposing yourself to the other players at the table.
What this means, is that if you decide you want to make a raise because the big blind has a small stack and he a weak player, the biggest risk you have will actually lurk in the seats that surround your opponent at the poker table. When attacking your opponent, you are affording an opportunity to the other players that are left to act and thus, you may unwillingly enter into battle with someone with whom you had neglected to account for in your decision-making.
When you clash with an opponent with an equally large chip stack, you want to be following a course of action that is designed with that opponent in mind. The risk that is discussed here originates because you are tailoring your actions towards the smaller stacked opponent who poses little or no threat to you. Your timing and maneuvering may be optimal for the opponent you are attacking, but will lend an advantage to some of the other players who have not yet acted.
In the example above, it would also be a mistake to let your opponent potentially walk with the blinds. As Sun Tzu suggests, you should surround him. This means you shall give him no room to breath and no opportunity to maneuver. It is almost inevitable that players will eventually make mistakes. When this happens, you want to be sure that you are in a position to benefit from their mistakes.
If your opponent presents you with an opportunity to strike, you shall oblige him. The key is to not focus your efforts on such a player. You should be concentrating on the players with chip stacks that are more relevant to you.
“If our forces are 5 to his 1…attack him”
If your chip advantage is 5:1, the scenario is such that if you were to lose a hand to your opponent, you would still have a chip advantage. Although your relative stack size would cause you to make adjustments, you would still be able to maintain your advantage. In this scenario, defeat would be of measurable consequence, but not detrimental to your chip position. Victory here will be of more value than the first scenario, which is described above. This is because the potential increase in chips represents a much larger portion of your chip stack. If you are able to add those chips to your stack, your ability to maneuver at the table will be increased. Thus, you should be attacking this opponent whenever an opportunity presents itself.
“If equally matched we can offer battle”
When the chip stacks are even, you must use all of your abilities to achieve victory. This may require any number of playing styles, tricks and strategies. The decision to enter into a hand with an opponent who is evenly matched should be not be a decision that is taken lightly. This is certainly the case when you are at a shorthanded table and the size of the blinds is such that you will soon be forced into battle with your opponents. When this is the case, the next few hands that you play will have a large role in the outcome of hands in the more distant future. The reason for this is that whoever is able to achieve an immediate victory will then be at an advantage in the subsequent hands.
“If slightly inferior in numbers we can avoid the enemy”
If you are at a disadvantage because of the relative size of your chip stack, you need to make adjustments for that in your decision-making. Avoiding these scenarios all together would be optimal, however the nature of poker makes this almost impossible for even the greatest players.
Even if you have a starting hand that is a slight favorite over your opponent’s hand, you can have a lower expected value in the hand because of the disadvantage that is attributed to your relative stack size.
If there is no practical reason for you to enter into a hand against this opponent, you should wait patiently for another opportunity. Practical reasons as mentioned here would include superior hand strength, or having a large portion of your chips already invested in the blinds. In both of these scenarios, the advantage that your opponent gains through the size of his chip stack would be negated.
“If quite unequal to the enemy in every way we can flee from him”
There is also going to be times in poker where you simply have no business getting involved in a hand. A great example of this would be when you are on the losing end of the first example above where you have a 10 to 1 chip disadvantage. With a chip stack of this size, you simply do not possess the necessary tools to gain an advantage over an opponent without having a superior hand. As Sun Tzu suggests, sometimes you just need to flee and hope that the grace of god can save you. It should be noted that this is different than giving up. An example of giving up would be to call off the rest of your chips with while holding 8-3 before the flop when you have no reason to do so.
When you are faced with a chip deficit that is this pronounced, you simply need to be more decisive with your hand selection. It would be unwise to leak chips from your stack by making probe bets or trying to get lucky on the flop. A player in this scenario should either be folding or raising their entire chip stack into the pot.
