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
You must adjust your play as stacks get shorter
You must adjust your play as stacks get shorter because implied odds begin to shrink. Drawing hands go down in value and you must be willing to stack off with hands like two pair unless the board gets very scary. You must play strong hands more aggressively before the flop. You should be happy getting a 75BB stack all-in with hands like A-K and Q-Q if your opponent is not too tight. You can still make tight folds against super-tight players, but your play should mostly be similar to when you have more than 125BBs. The following chapters will illustrate a few key concepts that differ from when you have a deeper stack.
Play Tighter As Stacks Get Shorter
Play Tighter As Stacks Get Shorter As stacks get shorter, your implied odds diminish and bluffs become more costly. You should play a slightly tighter range of hands than when deeper-stacked. Rarely call re-raises out of position with speculative hands, as you will be getting poor implied odds. This does not mean you should stop stealing blinds. Keep up the aggression as long as the players to your left fold their blinds to your late-position raises. While only slightly tightening your pre-flop raising range, you should raise to a slightly smaller amount. I usually raise to between 2.5 and 2.75BBs. It’s tough to call re-raises if you raise to a larger amount. Opponents will re-raise to an amount that pushes you off all but your best hands, forcing you to play fairly straightforwardly. When you re-raise, it should be to about 2.75 times your opponent’s raise.