Sometimes players get risk-averse even playing at their usual value and with their usual bankroll. Although in most cases it is a completely incorrect style of play, there are rare cases, when such decisions are warranted. For instance, you should be risk-averse in tournament play, where your chip stack is limited and cannot be refilled again. However, some tournament players are so risk-averse that they get negative expected utility. This way, or that – there are certain cases and game situations demand players to be risk-loving. This means that although you may be losing expected value, you may earn expected utility at the same time. Although there are just few instances, where such moves are applicable, they do occur time to time. A move that steals your expected value, but increases your expected utility means that such move is negative for the particular hand (stealing expected value from current hand), but in the long run it increases your expected value. Although this move is a mistake in terms of the current pot, it may help you in the future games by increasing your expected value. Before digging deeper into this matter, you must understand that such moves are suitable for professional players only, because novice and intermediate players can make serious mistakes and lose a lot of money trying to use this scheme. Once again, employing of these strategies by novice and intermediate players is not recommended under any circumstances in real money games. If you are interested in this question – try it in play money games and start using it in real money games only when you will understand all in-depth niceties of this scheme.

Cost of opportunity in Texas Holdem tournaments
When playing in an online Texas Holdem tournament, you can participate in a couple of MTRs as well (Multi-Table Ring games). While novice players usually play one game at a time, many advanced and expert players prefer to play on several tables at the same time. You may know that most online poker rooms support multi-table play, which means that you can open several table windows at the same time and switch between them, when it is your turn to act. By the way, in most online poker rooms, active window will pop up, when it is your turn to act, which is pretty handy. However, it is pretty understandable that in a brick-and-mortar casino, playing multi-table games is very difficult, even impossible. Unless you are a genius of Texas Holdem poker, you will lose expected value from the tournament. Besides of this, most tournament players will get extremely angry with your style of play, because you will definitely slow down the game and insult your opponents. Therefore, if you have decided to play in a live Texas Holdem tournament, then you shall definitely need to compare the expected rate from the Texas Holdem tournament and the hourly rate from casino games.
What I try to say is that if there are very profitable casino games in the house and if your hourly rate from casino games is very good in general, then you might consider an extra aggressive style of play. Being risk-loving in a Texas Holdem tournament may appear to be very profitable, since you will quickly get into the position to win Texas Holdem tournament or earn at casino games. Just by keeping to a puny stack may be the smallest expected utility of all possible situations. If to express this in mathematical terms, it may appear to be more reasonable to lose at the tournament and earn money you came for in other casino games. The most important thought that I am trying to express is that most players don’t think about their hourly rate, when playing slow card games, including Texas Holdem poker, especially in Texas Holdem tournaments. They just want to relax and enjoy the competition, forgetting about their hourly rate. However, it is pretty difficult to calculate interrelation of the hourly rate of a tournament play compared to the rest of casino games. Note that this theory is not applicable for online Texas Holdem tournaments and ring games, because they can work, listen to music or surf the web at the same time. Besides of this, most online tournament players tend to play multi tables. Try to play in an online Texas Holdem tournament and several ring games at the same time and you will see that it is much easier than you may have expected, because tournament play is always less intensive than in ring Texas Holdem games and casino games.

Also recommended:

1. Expected Utility in Texas Holdem poker
2. Expected Value and Fold Equity Explained