Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Running bad is going to happen to everyone
Running bad is going to happen to everyone multiple times throughout their poker careers. However, let's have a moment of honesty. If you knew what you were doing, and were skilled enough, you could absorb most negative variance by making the best play in many other situations. This holds especially true the lower the stakes you are playing. The higher the stakes you're playing, the less this will hold true because the average potential skill gap between you and your opponent will be less. At micro and small stakes though, the average potential skill gap can be gigantic.
Don't fool yourself into thinking
Don't fool yourself into thinking you're just on a bad run. Take an honest look at your game, and move down stakes if you need to. There's no shame in moving down, re- gaining your confidence, improving your game, and then moving back up. It's worse to continue to lose and blame it on bad luck.