Pool endgame — patience over the last two seats
The 101-pool endgame is the longest-horizon situation in 13-card rummy. The pool continues until one seat is alive. The last two seats play a different game: drop discipline is irrelevant, draw variance dominates, and the patience threshold becomes the deciding variable. The chapter walks through the math and the boundary between skill and variance.
The patience threshold
The patience threshold is the life total below which a player no longer folds marginal hands. A common threshold in 101-pool is 30 lives: a player below 30 lives plays only sequences with a published pure-sequence path, and drops otherwise. Below 30 lives, drop discipline saves 50 lives (the mid-life drop) at the cost of ceding the deal to the other seat.
Why draw variance dominates
Over the last two seats, the deck is small enough that draw variance matters more than the published drop math. A 50-life drop in the endgame can be recovered in 2-3 winning deals, but a 50-life loss in the middle of the pool can take 8-12 winning deals to recover. The patience threshold is the boundary at which drop discipline becomes net-negative.
The patience threshold is a description of legal play under published rules, not a guarantee of outcome. The boundary between reading skill and reading variance is probabilistic, not promotional. No skill system beats a long-run house edge built into the entry fee.
The elimination math
A player whose life total reaches zero in 101-pool is eliminated on the spot. The other seat takes the pool. In 201-pool, elimination is at zero lives as well, but the path to zero takes longer. The chapter covers both. The structural difference is the patience threshold's life value: 30 lives in 101-pool is roughly 15% of starting lives; the same threshold in 201-pool would be 60 lives.
Skill vs variance
The pool endgame is where the boundary between reading skill and reading variance is sharpest. The legal-play checklist still applies (anchor the pure sequence, group the second sequence, discard high-value unmatched cards), but the variance layer above the skill layer is large. Two players with identical legal-play discipline will produce different outcomes based on draw luck. The chapter does not publish a "winning system" — it publishes the boundary.