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
If I had to give some generalizations
If I had to give some generalizations about players’ pushing ranges, I would say most young kids push about 85 percent from the small blind, 75 percent from the button and 60 percent from the cutoff. They usually push with a decent hand from earlier positions. Older players, who are usually tighter, will be tougher to figure out because some of them push wide and some are very tight. Pay close attention to each player and do your best to pinpoint their ranges.
Call early-position pushes much tighter than those from late position
Call early-position pushes much tighter than those from late position because they have a much tighter pushing range. Also, in earlier positions you have to worry about everyone behind you picking up a hand. For example, suppose a good, aggressive player pushes from first position for 4,000 chips while playing 200/400-50. You are in 2nd position with A-J and a 20BB stack. In this spot you need to win around 43 percent of the time. If you give your opponent the range of 4-4+, A-J+, A-10s+, K-Q and a random 9-8s, you can determine whether you should call. Notice how I added 9-8s to his range. Most good, aggressive players randomly push with sub-par hands to balance their range, which isn’t a bad idea at all. Just remember to account for it when deciding whether to call a push. You’re right at 44-percent equity against this range, so consider calling if you are closing the action. This isn’t the case, as you have 7 or 8 players behind you, making this an easy fold. If you had A-Q instead, giving you 48-percent equity, you should still fold, especially with bad players at your table. Consider going all-in if everyone is playing near optimally. Call regardless of your table if you have over 50-percent equity.