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
If you only play 9-9+ and A-Q+,
If you only play 9-9+ and A-Q+, not only will you get no action due to your tight image, but your hands will actually become fairly tough to play because you will not be able to confidently get all your money in with an overpair or top pair. Your opponents will tend to play hands that do well against big pairs and will usually only put a lot of chips in the pot with hands that beat an overpair. When you play hands like J-J, even on a 9-6-2 board, you never really know where you stand against a check-raise, whereas an opponent will check-raise with a wide range if he can put you on a fairly wide range as well. Playing only the top hands turns your easy hands into tough ones.
What happens when you raise too many hands?
What happens when you raise too many hands? You will lose so many small pots that you won’t show a profit even after doubling up with your monsters. You should raise sometimes, but not all the time, when your opponents often fold to you. I will raise any sort of decent hand deep in a tournament unless there are numerous short stacks behind me that may push. I will raise with hands such as 5-4o, 7-4o, A-2, K-7, etc. I vary my play by folding hands that play poorly, such as K-2 and J-4. Once the antes get large, it is almost impossible to raise too many hands.