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
When your opponent takes a line that doesn’t make much sense,
When your opponent takes a line that doesn’t make much sense, you should tend to call him down. Say you are in your opponent’s shoes in the previous hand and you have J-10. If your opponent bets the river in that spot where he will usually show up with the nuts or nothing, you should call because you beat a huge part of his river betting range. If something smells fishy, you should lean toward a call. Again, both calling bluffs and figuring out who to bluff are very player-dependent. If you know a player never bluffs the river, you should only call when your hand is ahead of his river value-betting range. If you know a player never calls on the river without a very strong hand, bluff him every time. Also, some players only take weird lines with strong hands, so you should tend to fold in those situations.
Against the worst players,
Against the worst players, whom I don’t usually play in the highest buy-in tournaments, your lines may not have to make much sense. That being said, most terrible players don’t fold too often. They call too much, making value-betting the correct play against them. Against thinking opponents that can piece the puzzle together, be sure your hand looks like a real hand, or you will be spewing chips.