Winning vs. Surviving
Tournament online poker and cash poker games are two entirely different types of game. In a cash game, a player seeks to leverage whatever small advantage is available to win a pot. One big winning hand in a casino online game can make all the profit a player needs, and lets that player exit the game at will.
A tournament player must think about the surviving the long run. This player must carefully weigh every risk before taking any action because the longer you survive, the better the chance on making it into the big money prizes for the top finishers.
The payoff in a online poker tournament is proportioned according to the amount in the prize pool and how many players will be paid. If there are 100 players, most likely ten will be paid. If there are only twenty players, then only three will walk away with a prize. The first prize gets the biggest percentage, then the lower prizes shrink in percentage of the total prize. For the tournament player, small advantages are actually riskier propositions. Any erosion in your stack puts you further away from the top prizes.
Tournament players must consider their chances of survival before placing any bet. Because tournaments are contests where one player eliminated brings the remaining players closer to the money, the players must sometimes refrain from entering a pot that the cash player would pursue. Sometime the best advantage in a tournament as you get closer to the money is to protect your own chip stack and let the other players eliminate each other.
