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 may run into trouble when you flop something like middle pair.
You may run into trouble when you flop something like middle pair. If you flop one pair, the big blind pushes and one of the other players goes all-in as well, you have an easy fold. If the big blind goes all-in and the other players fold, you will be getting 2-to-1, having to call for 40BBs in an 80BB pot. You have around 20-percent equity in this spot if your opponent has an overpair, but most players’ ranges include more than just overpairs. They also have hands like A-K and A-Q in their ranges most of the time, giving you a huge amount of equity, often as high as 55 percent. So, you are stuck guessing if your equity is 20 percent or 55 percent. This is where knowing your opponent comes into play.
A great example of this concept came up in the $5,000 WPT event
A great example of this concept came up in the $5,000 WPT event at the Bike. A good, loose online player raised to 2.5BBs, a tight player called and I called from the small blind with 10-8 out of my 48BB stack. Erica Schoenberg, an accomplished live player, re-raised to around 10BBs. The initial raiser and the caller folded. I called with the intention of check-pushing any flop where I had a gutshot with an overcard or better unless there was an ace on board. The flop came 8-6-5. I checked, she bet 12BBs and I went all-in. She snap-called and turned over 9-8o. My 10 kicker held up, winning me a large pot. This situation is slightly different than I was discussing because I was heads-up. That doesn’t matter much because I was getting decent odds before the flop. When you bust out in these situations in a few tournaments in a row, it is easy to be discouraged. While these plays are high-variance, they are +EV in the long run.