You pay an buy-in for a starting stack, at which moment every chip is worth the same amount of cash. Your chips also change in their actual cash value every step of the way in a tournament. It also is constantly changing relative to everyone else's stack, being either above, below, or right around the 'average' at any given moment. When a chip stack is described in terms of big blinds, its value changes every time a new level begins. In other words, in tournaments the value of chips is constantly changing.

The way most tournaments pay out - with only the top 10 to 15 percent (sometimes more) getting a piece of the prize pool and the biggest cashes up top - also makes tournament poker very different from cash games where every chip has an assigned cash value that never changes. Multi-table no-limit hold'em tournaments differ from cash games in several respects, a key one being the increase in blinds and antes that constantly affect the significance of chips, making stacks 'shallower' (relatively speaking) and forcing players into action.

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