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
Similarly, always have between 2/5 and one pot bet
Similarly, always have between 2/5 and one pot bet left on the river when you want to go all-in. You want to have a reasonably sized bet on the river so your opponent will feel pot-committed, though he’s usually not. If you get to the river and you have twice the pot, you can’t really go all-in with the nuts because most opponents will fold all but the strongest hands.
Size your bets so you can get all-in without looking suspicious.
Size your bets so you can get all-in without looking suspicious. With a 30BB stack you can bet 2.5BBs pre-flop, 4BBs on the flop and 7BBs on the turn, and then easily go all-in for the last 15BBs on the river. If you have 40BBs, you have to bet more like 4BBs on the flop, 8BBs on the turn and the last 24BBs on the river, which is still less than a pot-sized bet. With 50BBs, bet 4BBs on the flop, 10BBs on the turn and 33BBs all-in on the river. The pot tends to grow exponentially, so as your stack gets deeper, you need to bet just slightly more on the early rounds so you can make an appropriately sized all-in bet on the river.