The Arnold Snyder’s Chip Utility concept applied to the Skill Poker Index

The chip utility study helps to define the minimum stack needed to engage each phases of the spot connected with the potential use of the relative poker skills needed. In particular, it was matter of defining the minimum stack available to complete the spot without moving all-in before the river phase.

Skill Poker Index: The Snyder’s Competitive Utility underlying the concept of applicability of the relative poker skills

Snyder considers that condition as the Competitive Utility, the one that is composed by a minimum of 60 Big blinds. Facing the Encyclopedic definition, it’s necessary to define the ultimate limit with which the stack can be considered minimally sufficient to support all poker skills up to the river. In his reflections, Snyder proposes to set that limit at 60 Big blinds, as well as competitive utility of 60%. The need to define that limit lies in the thesis according to which “everyone who moves all-in before the river, leaves the determination of the outcome of the spot to the random component”. By a stack less than 60 Big blinds, in fact, an action oriented to take the opponent’s stack, it will inevitably lead to use all the chip of own stack well before to reach the river.

The strategic function of the competitive chip utility in the elaboration of the Skill Poker Index

In the All-in condition, every information, every choice, every decision, every action, every poker skills, as we saw, is cancelled. Unlike the information units which take place gradually along the course of the spot, the chips available for each person involved are always available in the same way during the course of the hand. Of course, the stack will tend to decrease during the action, but the initial strategies will be indissolubly elaborated on the basis of the initial one of each spot, contemplating it simultaneously at every stage of the same.

Go to the next article not to lose the thread of the discussion on the Skill Poker Index, or go to the first article of the series to resume it. 

Pietro Semeraro