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 a tight player pushes from early position,
If a tight player pushes from early position, your range should be pretty tight. Suppose you have 30BBs. You can consider calling with monsters but should fold most weak hands, like A-10, because they are behind the raiser’s range. You should actually call with your entire range to keep it balanced, as it contains no weak hands. You can also shove your entire range, but that will cause large losses when a player behind you picks up a monster.
So, you need to determine a decent calling range
So, you need to determine a decent calling range if your opponent is only pushing 10-10+ and A-J+. Once again, you need about 40-percent equity because your opponent is pushing 10BBs. And remember that you actually need better than 40-percent because you will find better spots later, plus you have to worry about the players behind you. Your range is fairly interesting, as you can profitably call with 10-10+ and A-Q+. In early position with a 30BB stack I would only call with 10-10+ and A-K+, and call if someone behind me pushed. If I had a 50BB stack instead, I would still call the entire range.