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
This type of play should be employed sparingly,
This type of play should be employed sparingly, but used once every few tournaments, it can win you a decent number of chips. Your position in multi-way pots is very important, and not just relative to the button, but also in relation to whoever bets. Suppose someone raises and you call on the button with 10-9. Both blinds call as well. The flop comes K-10-3. If everyone checks to the raiser and he bets, you should strongly consider folding because you have to worry about the two blinds behind you. Even though you are on the button, two players can still act after you. If you had better relative position you could consider sticking around in the hand, but folding is probably your best option in this spot. You could consider calling, which would not be too bad. The problem is that one of the blinds could call, which would put you in a tough spot on the turn, or even if the blinds folded, you would still have to worry that the initial raiser could have a king or better. All in all, not much good can come from this situation.
In multi-way pots, weaker players usually don’t get out of line,
In multi-way pots, weaker players usually don’t get out of line, whereas the more creative, aggressive players will try to make plays from time to time, usually by continuation-betting a wide range, as they normally would in heads-up pots. Actively try to figure out everyone’s range in these situations and you will do well. Just don’t get carried away with making overly fancy plays yourself.