Know your part
A final table is a cast, and your stack casts you. The CHIP LEADER is the pressure machine: open wide, call the shorts' shoves at real prices — but never duel the second-biggest stack, whose ladder costs yours. MEDIUM stacks do the tightrope: avoid the leader, out-position the shorts, and fold the hands that feel immortal at five-handed. SHORT stacks play pure push-fold and pray. Above the casting runs the PAY LADDER: know the NEXT jump, not just the money — a jump worth five buy-ins re-prices calls that a one-buy-in jump leaves alone. And the classic ICM suicide: a big marginal call against the one player who can bust you. Covered chips are borrowed chips.