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
In the middle and late stages of a tournament,
In the middle and late stages of a tournament, when the stacks are relatively short, you can call a raise with A-A or K-K because it is necessary to double up and the opportunity is worth the risk of being outdrawn. Say you and your opponent both have around 25BBs late in a tournament. If he raises to 3BBs in the cutoff, you should usually just call with A-A on the button. On basically any flop, if he bets 5BBs or so, you should just call again, as you will usually have a huge amount of equity in the pot and don’t mind giving up a free card. You can now safely raise a turn bet all-in, or if he checks, bet with no intention of folding.
You should usually not slow-play
You should usually not slow-play if your opponent could be drawing to a hand that can beat you. However, if you have the hand locked up and your opponent is drawing dead, you can act weak and hope he makes a strong, but second-best hand and doubles you up. A good example is when you raise J-6s from the button, the big blind calls and it comes J-6-6. If your opponent checks, you should usually check behind because a significant number of cards might come to trick your opponent into thinking he has the best hand. He could also bluff you on the turn. Even in this spot, it is important to know your opponent, as some players will try to check-raise on this board because it is rather unlikely you flopped trips.