We are all quite familiar with the fact that Poker is indeed the most skilled card game in the World. Those who have been playing the game for while, would totally agree with the fact that being a winning player in Tournaments is far more difficult than making profits in Poker Cash games.
Its all seems quite simple when a Tournament begins, every player will start with equal chips and quite often the stacks are pretty deep as compared to the Blinds initially. Play the good hands and fold the bad hands, basic stuff! But as I said easier than it sounds. When you actually start playing a Tournament you will experience such crunch situations that even the best can err and give away all their chips in no time. One bad decision can eliminate you in a jiffy.
1. Start slow and then accelerate:
You should start off any tournament, cautiously and play as tight as possible in the beginning. Unless of course, you have a big hand and have to raise the bets. As you move through the initial levels, try and steady your ship, small pairs and hands like A-10 off are fine to fold to any raise, in the early stages.
As the blinds go up and players keep getting eliminated, you can now ease a little and start playing with more freedom. When it finally comes to the later stages, when all the big stacks are going to put pressure, it is now when you don’t hold back and start playing aggressively. If you don’t do this, it is highly likely the increasing blinds will consume your chips in no time.
2. Don’t Just Call:
Another prime rule of Tournaments is to be confident about the hands you play. Most players make the lame mistake by calling too many times pre-flop with marginal hands and denting their stacks, while doing this. If you think you have a decent hand, you should not just call with it, either you simply fold or you raise.
3. It’s fine to Min Raise:
During the early and middle stages of a tournaments you need to make sure that anytime you have a good hand and contemplate a raise, you do it with small chips.
There is absolutely no sense in raising it 4x (4 times) or 5x the big blind. By doing so, you are, firstly letting go a decent chance to extract value from a strong hand and secondly risking your chips by getting pot committed. If you run into a stronger hand than yours, you would have forced a fair chunk of your stack and would likely have commit all or most of your chips in a single hand.
On the other hand, if you min raise, 2x or close, you will not put yourself in a spot where you are pot committed and can fold to re-raise without much fuss.
4. Bubble Play:
This is a crucial phase of every tournament. Every player who has survived thus far, loves to atleast get some return on their investment by making it in the money. But do keep in mind that for a petty return you are putting the rest of your tournament future in a jeopardy.
Although there is no denying that one should be careful during this passage of the tourney, but not to the extent that you start laying down premium hands. Most amateurs tend to go on an ultra defensive mode and the Pros love to make the most of such situations. It is a regular occurrence for them and they love to squeeze the weak opponents by stealing chips with min raises, with or without a decent hand. So make sure you keep your game as consistent as possible throughout the tourney.
5. Never get ahead of yourself:
The thing with tournaments are that no matter how well you have performed through the levels, if you can’t keep the same composure and focus till the remainder of it, it will all be in vain.
You should feel good and positive about the fact that you have a healthy stack but never think that you are the boss. It takes one bad hand, for your stack to take a hit and a couple more to make it crumble. Stay focused and be ready to change strategies with situation demands.
If you have a big stack in the later stages, there will be other players trying to save theirs. This is when you play aggressive and steal the blinds with ease. But always be prepared to fold if you are played back as it is possible for someone to wake up with a strong hand.
Hope apply these tactics to your game, if your aren't already and see some positive results in the upcoming tournaments.