Table one puts you in box seat from the off

Part four: Averages and percentages

THERE is much involved with tournament poker that the uninitiated never stop to consider. Most players think only about how to play their cards. Take the value of being sat at table one. In most card rooms this table is in a prime spot and is usually used as the final table. Therefore it is notbroken up during the tournament.

Sitting here gives you an enormous advantage because the knowledge you pick up about your fellow players is vital as both you and they are unlikely to be moved until being eliminated. Here you need only to decipher the game of one new player at a time, as they arrive individually at your table.

This is a huge advantage as opposed to being moved around countless times as your tables are broken down during the course of the tournament, forcing you to play against numerous opponents whose style of play you have to learn quickly.

As an added bonus, table one is regularly sent new players and never broken up, so it invariably becomes the top table in the chip stack stakes - and being on any table with lots of chips is naturally a huge advantage.

On the subject of big stacks, I believe most players overly concern themselves with what they understand to be the ‘average chips stack'. Online poker sites display ‘average chips' as do monitors at land-based card rooms, but there are three types of average and these all use the most commonly used and perceived average, the ‘mean average'.

The mean average is simple, it adds up the number of chips in play and divides them by the number of players which remain.

But is that the magic number which you should be striving to match or better? I say not.

The ‘median average' is where it is at. This average pinpoints the number of chips the player in the exact halfway point has. Here's a basic example; say nine players remain in a tournament; the leader has 50,600 chips; the second 11,000; two people have 9,000; one has 7,900; two have 2,500 and two have 1,000.

Therefore there are 94,500 chips in play and the mean average indicates 10,500 chips is what you would ideally like to own. But the median average, the player in the midway point, is 7,900.

You should not concern yourself with the mean average, as it is invariably distorted with a few players possessing a mountain of chips and that is infrequently balanced out with an equal number of minuscule stacks.

Basically, the midway point among the descending list of playersand their chip stacks on the way to a final table is perfectly acceptable.

Incidentally, this is usually well below the mean average. As I've mentioned, knowing the median average stack is imperative in tournament play, along with appreciating the size of your stack and the relationship/ratio it has with the size of the blinds. It's the most important formula in the game.

Obviously, with a huge stack you can sit back and minimise the need to make plays and contest raises. You canalso go another way with a pile of chips, bully and collect blinds. But what use is that if those blinds are small in relation to the average stack and minuscule in relation to yours.

It's a case of selecting the right gear for the right time. If the blinds are huge, the differential between them and the average stack is small and you only have an average stack, the blinds have to be stolen.

Under such circumstances, especially if you have been playing tight passive poker, don't be afraid to lump your entire stack in to collect them. Forget what cards you are holding. That won't matter when your opponents pass - you really can play this game with your eyes shut.

FOR those new to the game, you probably don't know the meaning of the term ‘outs'. This refers to the cards which will make or dramatically improve your hand.

For example, if you are holding a 10-Jack and the flop comes 7-King-Ace, you have four ‘outs' that will make you a ‘nut' (the ‘nuts' meaning the best possible hand) straight, that is any of the four Queens in the deck.

Here is a more complex hand: you are holding Ad, 10d. The flop comes 10s, 3d, 2d. With this example any diamond will give you a flush and any 10 will give you ‘top-set' (three of a kind) which will also be a tough nut to crack. There are naturally nine Diamonds left in the deck plus a 10c and 10h, meaning, in this case scenario, you have 11 ‘outs'.

Now, each ‘out' has a mathematical percentage chance of arriving. When there are two cards to come - the turn and river cards - they have an approximate four per cent chance apiece of landing.

This is true for the first ten ‘outs' and then each onethereafter equates to an additional three per cent.

With just one card to come - the river - each ‘out' boasts an approximate 2.2 per cent chance of arrival. So, one of your 11 ‘outs' (looking back to our Ad, 10d situation), has about a 43 per cent chance of arriving when there are two cards to come and, with one card to come, just 24.2 per cent.

These figures are ‘rules of thumb', close approximations. Let's face it, if an odd 0.2 per cent makes a difference to you, you deserve to win back-to-back World Series! Trust me, you will get the hang of these maths very quickly, because it's simple: every ‘out' represents four per cent for the first ten cards then three per cent for each thereafter. With one card to come, each ‘out' represents 2.2 per cent. What could be easier?