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
While your opponent could have some random weak draw,
While your opponent could have some random weak draw, you should be happy calling down and letting him bluff. You should be more prone to raise with 9-8 in the same situation, as you have no showdown value. Another option is to call the flop and raise his turn bet, although that starts to risk too many chips for me to be comfortable in a tournament. Weak players tend to donk-bet when their hands have marginal showdown value, like middle or bottom pair with a good kicker, or top pair with a bad kicker. These players are leading into the raiser to see where they are. Give these players the bad news and raise relentlessly. I played a hand in the early levels of a WPT event where everyone had 300BB stacks. I raised from the cutoff with 10-6 and the big blind called. The flop came J-5-2 and the big blind lead into me for 4BBs into the 6BB pot. I realized the player would most likely be one to lead with these weak made hands so I raised to 16BBs. He thought for a while and called. The turn was an 8. He checked and I bet about 24BBs into the 38BB pot. He thought for a while and folded a jack face-up, saying he knew he was beat. He was also rather rude, and said I missed a lot of value playing my hand that way. He failed to realize that his hand was face-up, whereas I could have had a huge range of hands. In his mind though, my range was only top pair, good kicker or better. So, if someone tells you he has a weak hand, convince him you have a monster and pick up the free chips.
When there was a Reraise Before the Flop
When there was a Reraise Before the Flop The dynamics of a hand drastically change when someone re-raises before the flop. You should generally play a little more straightforwardly as the pot gets large, especially if your stack is starting to get short. If you are still very deep-stacked, you can occasionally bluff-raise or float on the flop, but you should do this rarely. For example, if someone raises to 3BBs out of a 150BB stack and you re-raise with 8-7, you should almost always continuation-bet, regardless of your position, because by re-raising, you can represent a wide range of strong hands, such as A-A, A-K and 8-7. If the board comes A-6-3 you can represent A-K, if it comes 8-7-2 you can represent 8-7, and if it comes 7-4-2 you can represent A-A. There is nothing wrong with picking up a 20BB pot at every opportunity.