Tournament Average Stack
The average stack in a tournament is a very important number for you to keep track of when you venture into the tournament arena. Most poker players do not really understand the significance of the average stack.
Oh sure, everyone gets the math. If we take the total number of chips and divide by the number of remaining players…. that is the average stack. Right. Now, so what? Here is where players go wrong, they assume if they have the average stack then approximately half of the players still in the tournament have more chips than they do and about the same number of players have less chips. That is absolutely wrong!
Here is a rule you can take to the bank. When the tournament begins, all players have the same number of chips and that is the average stack; as soon as one hand has been played, there will be fewer players above average than below and the number of players below average will get larger the deeper we get into the tournament.
This is simply the math of a poker tournament. Large stacks tend to be way above average and to balance those large stacks (balancing = averaging) there will need to be several small stacks for every large stack. In a normal tournament by the half way point (when 50% of the starting players have busted out) the average stack will be larger than at least 60% of the remaining stacks and often that number is higher.
There are tournaments when the average stack actually begins to average out again and sometimes a final table begins with many nearly average stacks. But even in these instances, if you check back during the middle and late stages of the tournament, you will find many more small stacks than large ones.
The average stack is a good barometer for tournament players to shoot for because as long as you are average, you are ahead of the pack.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #96
