Tournaments

Most people start tournaments with the intention of being aggressive and bluffing a lot of hands. The reality is that most play tight and chicken out of bluffs (until it is too late and they feel they have no option when their chip stack is all but gone, but the bluff will scare no one). So how should you play your hands? What is your strategy before the tournament?

Well like cash tables you should start with an open mind and develop your playing style in accordance with how others are playing and how good your hands are/develop as the community cards are shown.

But what are the pros and cons to the different styles available to you

Part I
Hit the ground running
You can start playing hands from the start either because you are actually getting good hands or because you have decided to play aggressively i.e. bluffing hoping to scare of players who have chosen to play tightly.
I(a) Hitting hands early
Getting good hands at the start is a great boost to your confidence, unfortunately it is unlikely to boost your chip stack very much. With the blinds being low the amount of chips going into the pot are small, and the lack of an anti makes the pot even smaller.
Getting the same hands later on in the tourney is far more beneficial.
That’s why I always worry about my chances of success when I get good cards early, I cant keep on hitting good hands so they are likely to dry up when I most need them i.e. when the blinds are big, leaving me with aggression and bluffs to get me to a winning position.

I(b) Playing aggressive/bluffing early
As I said earlier most people have the intention of playing aggressive from the start and bluffing their way to win big posts early on (you always hear someone in a televised tourney mouthing off about how aggressive they are going to be, but seldom actually are. Ian Fraser and Annette Obrestad are the only players that come to mind who are truly aggressive.
My experience is that whilst most will play tightly early on they are reluctant to let a big bet push them off a hand i.e. they will not bet/raise with a large amount of chips but they will call your big bet. So if you choose to be aggressive/bluff from early on you will run into a player with better cards and lose a big bit of your stack as you put bigger and bigger bets to push them off the hand, but without success losing about a 1/3 of your stack early on.

1(c) How should you play it?
The most important thing to do at the start is work out who are the weak and strong players at your table, be patient, wait on hands worth risking your chip stack on then play aggressively. Let it be known that when you put chips in the pot you are going to be aggressive and win the pot. This way you will be able to get away with stealing a few blinds later on.
If you hit a run of good cards play them well and hope that someone thinks you are bluffing having played so many hands. Look out for the opportunity to slow play a hand and get someone pot committed.

When you hit a dry spell and get no decent hands you should still try to steal blinds because as long as you win the blinds then you are still in the game. A minimum raise is all that is required to make the blinds fold – unless they have a hand in which case you haven’t lost much cash. Steal the blinds from 1 before the button to being in the big blind itself as long as no one has raised the betting in which case you are very unlikely to be able to make them fold. Other than that be patient and hope that your luck returns, other wise your chip stake will begin to look small (even though it hasn’t shrunk) as the blinds get bigger.

If your luck has not changed and your stack is about to fall below half of the average stack and the big blinds is more than a tenth of your stack then it is time to start considering going all in. If you wait much longer then your stack will be small compared to your opponents and any bet you make will get called by more than 1 player so the number of community cards that can put you out increases. Also the biggest stacks can start to bully you once you get to small.

So when do you go all in? If you have anything below an ace and someone else has bet before you then I’d keep my gunpowder dry and wait. If you get an A 10 hand or any pair I’d go all in even if someone has bet. It’s then up to the poker gods because you will probably have at worst a 40% chance of winning and, assuming you don’t have a big pair, a 60% chance. If you get a big pair (Qs or higher) you may be tempted to slow play with the expectation that someone will try and bully you to fold or a few people will call pre-flop and you then go all in on the flop (assuming you don’t hit trips) and hope that no one hits 2 pair or better. It is a bit risky but there is more chips to be won this way and when you are short stacked it’s all about chips, chips, chips.

Where Do you want to finish
How many places get paid? Are you happy to finish in the money or do you want to finish first? The higher up the winning pos
The opportunity and dangers of the anti

Sit Outs

Short Stacks