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
Players sometimes get a bit too fancy
Players sometimes get a bit too fancy by slow-playing hands when they shouldn’t. We had 100BB stacks in a hand in a $1,500 WSOP event. Someone limped from early position, I limped with 9-8 from third position, a few others limped and the button raised to 3BBs. The initial limper re-raised to 6BBs, which is clearly a mistake, as we were now all getting great implied odds to call. Everyone called and the flop came 10-7-6, giving me a straight.
The limp-re-raiser checked
The limp-re-raiser checked and I bet to try to build a pot, hoping someone in the hand had something. I bet about half-pot and everyone folded back to the initial limp-re-raiser who instantly went all-in. I, of course, called and beat his Q-Q. Clearly, this is an example of a weak player trying to get tricky with a big hand only to get all the money in drawing dead. Don’t try to put fancy plays on your opponents. Most of your profit in poker will come from your opponents’ mistakes, not your fancy plays. If you keep your cool and don’t do anything silly, you will have fairly consistent profits at the poker table. Watch for players who go out of their way to put a play on you. If you see them coming, you can make a great player look like an idiot and take his money.