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
The best strategy is to adopt the style of play
The best strategy is to adopt the style of play and demeanor that best suits you, but then to vary this from time to time. You must occasionally vary your manners and mannerisms and, most of all, your style of play. If you are a tight player, you must occasionally play a trash hand. If, in Draw, you ordinarily draw three cards to a pair, vary your style of play and hold a kicker. If in Five Card Stud you generally call or raise with an ace, king, or queen in the hole, then occasionally you must play with a low five or six in the hole. If you seldom play a weak hand, occasionally you must do so. If it is not your style to bluff, occasionally you should bluff. Even in a tight game, where one must necessarily play tight to win, you must make an occasionally unsound loose play.
I have known dozens of superb professional Poker players
I have known dozens of superb professional Poker players here and abroad who had only one weakness. And that one weakness cost them a fortune. They were masters in the art of dissecting the playing habits of their opponents for the smallest giveaway, but it never occurred to them to analyze their own playing habits in the same way. If they had done so, they could have gotten rid of some dead-giveaway habits of their own, which in time made them sure losers instead of possible winners.