My poker buddies have been having another of our periodic email conversations about a particular poker hand when the term "average stack" came up. Whenever I talk about average stack, there are always players, even very good players who are surprised by the numbers.
Average stack is simply the measure of how many chips each player would have in a tournament if you divide the total chips by remaining players. So you start an event with 10,000 chips each and 500 players, it makes sense that with 250 players remaining the average stack is 20,000. Half the players are out, so everyone should have twice as many chips. Of course, that is not how tournaments actually play and there will be a wide distribution of those 2.5 million chips.
Lots of tournament players keep track of the average stack, it is one of the statistics most good computerized tournament clocks provide. In a smaller field tournament you can keep a fairly accurate count just by knowing the starting field and how many players remain. In big events, you can just consult the tournament clock.
OK, so you have survived Day One of a multi-day tournament and you are just below average stack. What does that mean? Well, what it does not mean is that you are just below the middle of the the field, because average stack is not the middle of the field, at least not once the cards have been dealt. The way poker works is that some player build big stacks and lots of others are short stacked.
In most tournaments at the end of Day One, the average stack will be in the top quarter of the field. On average only around 25% of the field will be above average. If you keep your stack at or around average in the first three quarters of a tournament's playing time, you are actually doing well above average.
As play nears the final table, one of two things will happen to the average stack. Either the 25% rule will roughtly remain in effect and the final table will begin with several small stacks and a couple of big stacks or the big stacks will take out all of the small stacks as play approaches the final table and the final nine will be fairly equal in stacks, as they all have feasted on the short stacks equally.
Note: the longer a tournament runs, the higher the average stack percentage can go. In major tournaments of four or five days, players below average stack will at times be more than 80% of the field.
