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
Suppose you are on the button with a 12BB stack
Suppose you are on the button with a 12BB stack and everyone has folded to you. There are 3BBs in the pot before the flop from the blinds and antes. If you go all-in with any two cards, you will have around 35-percent equity when called. Assuming the small blind calls 15 percent of the time and the big blind c alls 20 percent of the time, you will be called around 35 percent altogether, disregarding the times they both call, which won’t happen too often. So, 65 percent of the time you win 3BBs and 35 percent of the time you have 35percent equity in about a 27BB pot. Your expectation is 0.65(3) + 0.35[27(0.35) - 12] = 1.95 - 0.89 = 1.06BBs. The result changes little if your opponents call with a wider range because your equity in the hand increases. Also, pushing becomes even better as your stack gets smaller. So, be willing to shove a very wide range when everyone folds to you on the button. Push a tighter range if there are no antes because the pot you steal will be smaller. Once everyone gets to this stack size though, the antes are usually quite large, allowing you to push a very wide range profitably.
I am going to lay out my general pushing strategy
I am going to lay out my general pushing strategy from every position. If you know all the players’ calling ranges, there are computer programs that can determine your profitable pushing range. Since you can’t do this when actually playing poker, I will provide general guidelines. Push more hands if your table is tight. If they are calling wide, hands like A-x go up in value while hands like 5-4 go down. Always pay close attention to each player at your table because an easy push can become an easy fold.