Tournaments
Short stacks and the point where raising stops making sense
Below a certain depth, a raise that is not a commitment is just a smaller loss. The threshold is set by the blinds, not by the cards.
Tournaments
What the bubble does to the value of a chip
In a tournament, chips won are worth less than chips lost. Near the money that gap widens far enough to change which hands are worth playing.
A cash game chip is worth its face value at all times: it can be picked up and taken away. A tournament chip cannot. Its only worth is the share of the eventual prize pool it represents, and that relationship is not a straight line. Doubling a stack does not double what the stack is worth, because a player can only finish first once, while a player who loses every chip finishes with nothing at all.
The asymmetry, stated plainly
Because the relationship curves, the chips a player wins are worth less each than the chips that player risks to win them. That is true at every stage of a tournament. It is barely noticeable early, when there is a long way to go and a stack has many chances to recover. It becomes the dominant consideration when a small number of eliminations separate the field from the point where prizes begin.
The practical effect is that marginal calls become worse and marginal folds become better, not because the cards changed but because the cost of being wrong grew relative to the reward for being right. A call that would be routine with a distant finishing line can be a clear pass when elimination means leaving with nothing and survival means leaving with something.
Who it constrains and who it frees
The pressure is not shared evenly. A large stack risks the least by playing a pot, because losing it does not threaten a finish in the money. A medium stack risks the most, because it can be eliminated and it has a comfortable finish to protect. A stack so short that it will be blinded out within an orbit or two has the least to protect and can afford the widest range, because waiting is itself a losing plan.
This is why a competent large stack applies pressure near the bubble and a competent medium stack declines most of it. Neither is being timid or reckless. Each is responding to a different relationship between the chips being risked and the prize those chips represent.
What it does not license
The asymmetry is a reason to tighten marginal decisions, not a reason to stop playing. A player who folds everything near the bubble hands the blinds and antes away at a rate that costs more than the occasional lost pot, and arrives in the money with a stack too small to do anything with. The adjustment is narrower ranges in the spots where elimination is genuinely at stake, and unchanged aggression in the spots where it is not, including every pot contested against a stack that cannot eliminate you.
Once the bubble bursts, the curve flattens again for a while and the pressure lifts. Ranges that were correct five minutes earlier become too tight, and the players who adjust back first collect the pots from the players who are still playing the previous level.