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
It is important to not take nonstandard lines
It is important to not take nonstandard lines with your strong hands as well. In the 2010 $10,000 WSOP main event, someone raised from middle position, I called with Q-10 on the button and a loose, but bad player called from the big blind. The flop came Q-Q-6. Everyone checked to me and I bet, assuming someone might call with an underpair. The big blind called and the turn was a 4. The big blind lead into me for around 2/5 pot. This line seemed weird to me so I just called. The river was a 9. He bet around 2/5 pot again and I called, losing to his Q-J. Clearly, with almost any other line he would have won a lot more money and probably would have gotten my stack. While not quite slow-playing, it is still very –EV.
Let’s talk about slow-playing pre-flop.
Let’s talk about slow-playing pre-flop. While there are a few spots to slow-play A-A and K-K, they do not come up that often. Notice that I did not list any other hands to slow-play, as there are simply too many poor flops and in general, if you can take down a pot by re-raising pre-flop, it will show more profit than seeing a cheap flop and taking the risk that someone will suck out on you. One of the worst plays is to limp in with A-A, hoping someone will raise so you can put in a big re-raise. This play turns your hand face-up, unless you constantly make this play with a wide range of hands, which would be horrible, and it almost guarantees that you win a 7BB pot with little chance of stacking your opponent unless he happens to have a strong hand as well. If you limp and someone raises to 5BBs, your re-raise to 12 or 15BBs will usually scare everyone out. If you are deep-stacked, he can call and only put in more chips when he gets a good flop. All in all, this is a terrible situation for you.