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
Getting All-In with a Strong Hand
Getting All-In with a Strong Hand Weak players often slow-play strong hands in the hope of getting some value out of their opponents. They either slow-play until their hand is behind or give a free card and only win a small pot. When you have a big hand, you want to get all the money in. To do this, you usually have to bet your hand unless you are against an abnormally aggressive opponent. You also need to bet larger than you would with your average hands, assuming you are playing against an unobservant opponent. Against a good player, you should usually bet standard sizes. Suppose you have a 70BB stack and your opponent has you covered. You raise J-J pre-flop to 2.5BBs and the small blind calls. The flop comes A-J-2. The small blind checks and you check behind, trying to slow-play. The turn is a 7. The small blind leads for 3BBs, you raise to 10BBs and he calls. The river is a 6. The small blind checks and you bet 20BBs. The small blind calls and loses with A-Q.
You missed out on a ton of value in this spot.
You missed out on a ton of value in this spot. You probably could have gotten more chips in by playing your hand fast. I would bet 4BBs on the flop, hoping my opponent has an ace. If he doesn’t have an ace, not many turn cards will improve his hand enough to justify putting in a significant amount of chips unless he improves enough to beat you, such as with K-Q or 5-4 if he hits his gutshot. You will also never see these hands coming and will get stacked every time. A bet makes sense for that reason alone. So, when you bet 4BBs on the flop, he is going to fold everything besides an ace or maybe a jack, which is unlikely because you have two of them. If he check-raises on the flop, call the raise and then call a turn bet as well because most players’ check-raising range on this flop is drawing dead or near dead. If he calls, will bet around 12BBs on the turn and then go all-in on the river if he checks again, as you will have about a pot-sized bet and most opponents will have a hard time folding top pair. By slow-playing, not only do you risk losing to a concealed draw, but you also miss value when your opponent has a strong hand.