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 constantly make calls where you stand to be ahead,
If you constantly make calls where you stand to be ahead, you will make money in poker. Now that you can figure out what odds you are getting, you will be able to determine if you are in a profitable situation or if you are throwing your money away. There are many things to consider when thinking about a poker hand. If you focus hard on determining the optimal play, these thoughts will stay in your mind and you will always know what odds you are getting.
Effective Stack Size
Effective Stack Size One of the biggest mistakes tournament players make is to not pay attention to effective stack sizes. For example, say you have 100BBs in the small blind and it’s folded to you. Your raising range should be vastly different if your opponent has 10BBs versus 100BBs. When you are in a hand with only one other player, the smallest stack size is the only one that matters, as that is the most either player can win or lose in that hand. So, if you are in the cutoff with 50BBs, the button has 10BBs, the small blind has 20BBs and the big blind has 30BBs, you’re in a tough situation, as you should play quite differently against each player. In this situation, I will generally raise only hands with which I am willing to call all-in from the smallest stack all of the time and the other stacks some of the time.