Last night I was playing in a $30 buy in NL Holdem tourney on UB with 200 entrants. You receive 1500 chips to start. Doing the math I figure the average chip stack at final table will be around 30K. Approaching the second break I am the chip leader by a lot, I hit over 70K in chips. Now every book I've read says play to win, however, I realistically could sit out and coast to final table and probably still be chip leader in tourney once there. As it turned out several people at final table had less then 20K. After blinds and antes I easily would have had 60K in chips going to final table had I just sat out, what do you do..Keep playing the way you have and assume your hands will continue to hold and expose yourself to races..such as QQ vs AK with you having QQ, and try to get 1/3 of all chips in play before reaching final table or sit out and go back to work at final table, being at least in the top four in chips??

I ended up fifth in tourney which was an okay payday of 417 and thankfully got all my chips in when the other guy had a four outer to win and a two outer to chop and hit his four outer to send me on my way but had I sat out I would have made final table with 2X as many chips, and more control/flexibility.

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"The only thing you regret in life, is the risk you didn't take"