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
Opponents will often pot-control against you.
Opponents will often pot-control against you. When this happens, you should bet strongly with hands that tend to be better than their pot-control range, as they will usually pay off a bet on the river.
Suppose someone raises and you call with A-Q.
Suppose someone raises and you call with A-Q. If it comes Q-9-2 and he bets, you should control the pot by just calling. If he checks, he either has a hand and wants to get to showdown cheaply, or he has a hand with no value. When he has a weak hand, he is going to give up to any aggression, so you can forget about those hands, especially if you know he will never bluff the river. Bet around 3/4 pot on the turn and river a gainst hands like Q-J, as you will probably be called twice. Pot-controlling the turn by checking behind in this situation would be terrible because you would lose a lot of value from all worse queens, as well as hands like A-9 or K-9. So, bet strongly in this situation for value.