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The motivation behind aiming for first place is the top heavy prize structures in poker tournaments.

The increased risk that you'll be eliminated before the money is more than compensated by the huge potential money in those first 2-3 places.

It's better to finish with nothing 95 times and then win five, than finish in the small money 25% of the time.

Increasing your risk also increases your expectation - that's the engine that drives this aggressive tournament strategy.

However, as we've seen in our articles on utility in poker, the amount of risk that you're ready to endure depends on your wealth. If the amounts in question are big enough, a safe win can be rationally preferred over a bigger one that's connected with a risk.

If you're in an expensive tournament, even the smallest available prize can be very attractive to you. Maybe so attractive that the risk-taking that's required to win big isn't worthwhile.

That is, not worthwhile to you personally, with respect to your personal utility (that is, the value of money that you experience in that range.)

For example, if you usually play in $10 tournaments and then happen to qualify for the $10,000 WSOP Main Event, winning the smallest prize of $20,000 can be a huge thing.

So huge that you'll not even take a coin flip for $40,000. And you'd be perfectly rational. In this case, $40,000 isn't worth twice as much as $20,000.

Not to you.

/Charlie River

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