Poker: Understanding Chipleading

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Should you aim to be chipleader or not?
In tournaments that last several hours, sometimes even days, you are likely to see many different phases of game play. Knowing how to manage these phases is crucial for all players who wish to go far in the tournament and make it into the paying phases. Typically a tournament (whether online or in real life) pays 10% of the participants and this is paid in a progressive fashion, with the top 1% being paid the most. A tournament is structured in such a way that it changes from hour to hour; the blinds double from round to round and players therefore take greater risks the further along the game progresses.
Being a chipleader (the player with the most chips) in a tournament is at the same time a great advantage and a massive risk. It is very rare for a player who is the chipleader in earlier phases to maintain this position throughout the game, even if he benefited from a large advance. When the World Series of Poker (WSOP) of 2006 was in play the rule was contradicted, by crowning two competitors who had been chipleadrers from the first day (of the ten days the tournament played). In the mode of poker no-limit, a game can be rocked to its foundation anytime from one moment to the next.

Managing Chips:
Being in the position of chipleader does not mean that a player should stop being as vigilant as he would otherwise be. Like you saw in a previous chapter, the important factor regarding chips is not the total number you posses but the average amount of tokens held by the rest of the players. It is the relationship X between the sum of the blinds and the amount of chips you have (see link above Master Your Game).
However, playing a tight or aggressive game when you are chipleader can bring you good returns; your opponents know the volume of chips you hold and know that you can pay their raises (or bluff). Thus, generally, a table where one player has a great deal more chips than the others changes very quickly; those with a small volume of chips will play their good hands very early in the round (they think, with good reason, that they will be paid by your very large volume of chips, even if their hand is only marginally above average) while players with a medium volume of chips are scared to enter into a hand in case they are eliminated by the amount of chips held by the chipleader.
Being in the position of chipleader allows the player to take the time to study other players form and the path the game is following, much more easily than if he were in a weaker position. If someone with a medium amount of chips enters the round, you should realise that they feel they have a very strong hand, if a person with a small amount of chips enters and is hesitant, steal the blinds and push them into making mistakes by putting them under pressure.
It is always an intelligent technique to force the weaker players into taking un-mastered risks by prohibiting them from profiting from the blinds of their opponents and by raising their raises when you feel that they do not have a strong enough hand to risk wagering on the round. This is the tactic of the "card dead", i.e. push weak players with few chips closer and closer to elimination.
Your high volume of chips is likely to impress your fellow opponents who, when seeing you entering into a round, know that their chips are at great risk. Do not misuse your position as chipleader in order to pay every round, more and more you will have to raise or re-raise, and less and less call. You should in other words, not give the impression that you are looking for the best cards, activity which will allow you to maintain your lead.

Good tempo:
In the same fashion, always put into perspective your losses when you are chipleader. If at the beginning of the tournament you have 1500 chips and you have climbed very rapidly to 20000 chips, while you opponents have only an average of 2000 chips, you should never lose sight of the fact that a loss of ten percent of your total is equivalent to the whole amount of chips held by your opponents. Never let yourself lose 2000 chips in a hazardous move, your gaming intelligence should always be vigilant no matter the volume of chips you posses.
Many professional poker players will tell you that in a tournament situation, the most important factor is being in the right tempo, not to be leader from the off. Most of the time those players who are positioned in the lead very quickly explode in full flight; a tournament is a long playing game, therefore play the long game! You have to know how to manage the risks and master the game, how to weather a storm when you have had a long bout of bad hands.
Professional players are very rarely the chipleadrers in the first stages of the tournament; on the other hand, they know how to change the flow of their game, when the blinds are high and their opponents fall out of the game one by one.
There are two ways of imagining your play in poker tournaments; playing for first place or playing to enter the paying positions. An amateur player will try to play in order to enter into a paying position, in order to be reimbursed the entrance fee and hopefully make a little profit. A professional does not care about the entrance fee, he is there to enter into the top 8%, to achieve one of those positions that are by far the best paid. He will be able thus to take many risks in the final stages of the tournament as he will already have guaranteed some winnings, and will take risks in order to be at the final table, facing his last seven or eight opponents.

Cash games:
In cash games, the problem of leadership is very different; again here, it is advantageous to be chipleader, but you have to optimise your game and take note of the dangers inherent in the lead positions.

Limit mode:
Obviously, the above considerations are very important in the case of playing no-limit poker. As you can probably appreciate, in limit mode (where raises have limitations placed on them), the position of chipleader is a lot stronger and less weakened by the amount of chips of other players. Becoming a chipleader is a much more arduous process in limit mode, taking smaller amounts at a time means it takes longer to accrue a significant number of chips. Equally, it is less easy to lose the position once you are there.
In the case of a game of pot-limit, the problem is very similar to no-limit, because two or three consecutive raises, in a gaming structure where the blinds are higher, can be enough to force a player to go all-in.

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