Trying to protect your tournament life at the expense of acquiring chips is a misguided gamble based on a lot of blurr y assumptions and an underestimate of the luck element in poker. However, when you’re on the bubble the value of your tournament life leaps sharply into focus.

Simply put, tournament strategy begins at the bubble because that is the first point at which you can make money by not playing a hand.

At the start of this series of articles I defined tournament strategy as being anything that would make no sense in a cash game. In a cash game, passing your hand can only save you money; it can’t make you any.