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
Poker is a complex game.
Poker is a complex game. More situations come up than I could write about in this book. You must learn to be quick on your feet and know how to determine the best play. This section consists of random topics that apply to poker in general. These concepts can be applied to most betting rounds. There are technical concepts as well as mental ones. These concepts will help you navigate through a poker tournament and give you the best chance to win.
Make Your Decisions Simple
Make Your Decisions Simple If all your decisions in poker are simple, you will win more money by making more correct plays. This does not mean you should play only premium hands. If you do that, you will surely blind off and go broke. It means that when you make a bet, you need to think ahead about what your opponents are most likely to do so that you can make better bets earlier in a hand. The easiest way to make your decisions simple is to get all-in early in a hand. Most professionals try not to get all-in, but once you are down to 25BBs or less, getting all-in over a raise is usually the most +EV way to play most decent hands. Also, if you get all-in on the flop with hands like a good draw or the nuts, it is impossible to make a mistake. For example, say you have A-K and raise to 2.5BBs out of your 40BB stack. One opponent, a good, aggressive player that has you covered, calls on the button. The board comes J-9-4. You bet 4BBs and your opponent raises to 10BBs. In this spot you should usually go all-in for your remaining 23BBs. If you just call, you will have 23BBs left and will be out of position for the rest of the hand.