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
Suppose you raise with 8-7 from the button
Suppose you raise with 8-7 from the button to 2.5BBs out of your 70BB stack and the small blind re-raises to 7.5BBs. You call and the flop comes A-9-9. Your opponent bets 10BBs and you call. He checks a 2 turn and you check behind, as you would with any ace in this situation. The river is the 5. Your opponent checks. Here you can make a small bet of around half-pot, or 16BBs, and pick up the pot quite often.
Notice there are no draws on the flop,
Notice there are no draws on the flop, which means your flop call is an ace, nine or float. When you check behind the turn, most opponents will take floats out of your range. On the river, you make what looks like a value bet. Notice that when your opponent checks both the turn and the river, his range contains basically no aces or nines, meaning he will be making a crying call with a weak holding if he decides to look you up. All in all, this is a very profitable play.