Tournament Chip Bully

You may not likea tournament chip bully - someone with 100 big blinds or more - but they serve a useful purpose.  It is annoying to be raised and reraised by someone who can price you out of a reasonable hand.  And it gets tiresome watching that person rake more and more chips in the early levels of a tournament. It seems like karmic redistribution left you out of the riches stacked up in front of them.  And it feels like everything you do when you oppose them is subject to be your last move at the tournament.

And that's exactly why you need them.

Tournaments are full of good players who can wait around with small stacks - playing disciplined poker -  waiting for aces or kings and survive into the money.  But not everyone can make it to the money - you don't want that.  You need people to be robbed of their chances ( their inevitable kings or aces) before they get there and double up.

Enter the chip bully. He or she will raise you with middle pair or call your all in with a straight draw not because they are foolish but because they are doing their best to eliminate players.  You want those players out as much as they do.  Chip bullies got their massive stacks by outsmarting or outlucking players early on and they just keep their foot on the gas pedal trying to  get rid of the rest of you.  That's the job of a chip leader - weed out the foolish.

Here is the reality: a chip bully may have a better chance of making the money than the average player waiting for good cards.  Sure, if they are not just foolish they can pause if their stack gets too small and just coast into the money.

But after the money bubble and before the final table there is no guarantee they will make the final table.  During the post-money bubble phase, there will be lots of people going all-in and doubling with races like Aces versus kings, suited connectors versus pairs and so on.  And so at this point people who were passively riding out the bubble may develop as many chips as an early chip bully. Suddenly a chip bully with a superior stack runs into aces, and then kings. Or loses a race and becomes just an average stack.  Then they have no more advantage than the rest of the players.  Sometimes they do worse than normal because they are so used to winning with marginal hands they don't know how to slow down and wait for cards.

So remember that next time you are frustrated by a chip bully.  They are your ally to the money.