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
If your opponent calls you 50 percent of the time,
If your opponent calls you 50 percent of the time, which may or may not be the case, you will win 20BBs half the time and you will have around 40-percent equity the rest of the time, so you have (20)(0.5) + (0.5)[(50)(0.4) - (50)(0.6)] = 5. You profit 5BBs on average by semi-bluffing in this spot. Clearly, you should rarely pass up a bluffing opportunity here. Again, you must know your opponent because if he will always call your all-in re-raise after he raises to 10BBs, which some opponents will do, you have no fold equity and your expectation is now (20)(0) + 1[(50)(0.4) - (50)(0.6)] = -10BBs.
The key to bluffing is fold equity,
The key to bluffing is fold equity, which is simply your equity due to an opponent’s folding. Suppose you have no equity in a hand if called, which occurs when you bluff on the river with a terrible hand. For example, you have 5-4 on an A-7-6-K-J board, which gives you 5-high. Your opponent bets the 10BB pot on the river and you go all-in for 50BBs. What percentage of the time must your opponent fold to make your bluff profitable? You can use the same formula as above. You win the 20BBs in the pot when your opponent folds, and you lose 50BBs when he calls. Divide the pot by the sum of the pot and your bet to solve for how often your opponent must fold to make your raise break-even. So, 50/(50+20) = 0.71, which means you will profit if your opponent folds more than 71 percent of the time. You must be significantly better than break-even in a tournament because if you are wrong one time, you are out.