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
With limpers in front of me, I tend to raise
With limpers in front of me, I tend to raise only my most premium hands, and total junk occasionally. If there are four limpers and the action gets to me, I will raise with 8-8+, A-J+, K-Q and random hands. When you raise over the limpers with junk, your hand doesn’t matter that much, as most of your profit will come from just picking up the blinds. I would rather check and see a flop with a hand like 8-6 because it flops well. It’s better to raise with hands that flop poorly, such as A-3, K-6 and Q-4. Again, be careful about making these plays. Even if you hit the flop, your value is going to come from winning the blinds pre-flop.
If everyone folds around to the small blind,
If everyone folds around to the small blind, you are now in a powerful position in the big blind because you act last on all betting rounds. Because of this, you should call raises fairly wide and re-raise fairly wide as well. But you should still fold junk hands. If everyone folds to the small blind and he raises, you can re-raise with hands like A-2, K-5, Q-8 and other hands that have reverse implied odds. Also re-raise good hands like 7-7+, A-10+, K-J+ and Q-10+. You should tend to call with suited connectors and small pairs because you will have decent implied odds due to position. Even though you can re-raise with a wide range against the small blind, you should also consider calling with many hands in order to use your position to win the pot on a later street.