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
In early position with 1BB,
In early position with 1BB, you have even more reasons to get all-in with bad hands. Now, if you go all in, you could start a chain of limps, giving you huge odds. Someone will usually bet the flop, getting you heads-up with 8-to-1 odds. You will probably be against the best of your opponents’ hands, but still, you will have some equity and great odds. Also, if you go all-in for your 1BB, someone behind you could raise, giving you great odds as well. If someone raises in front of you, call with basically any hand besides the absolute worst, namely 9-2 to 3-2 and 7-3 to 4-3. You should rarely fold when getting great odds.
If you have a larger stack,
If you have a larger stack, like 3BBs, you still have a little fold equity, and the antes will not erode your stack as quickly as when you have 1BB, so you can fold your absolute worst hands. If you go all-in and only one person calls, or if someone raises and you go all-in, you will be getting 2-to-1, meaning your hand needs only 33-percent equity, which most hands will have. So, any time you can get in with more than 33-percent equity, you should. Say you have J-7 on the button with 3BBs and the cutoff raises. Call almost always, unless the raiser is very tight. Fold if someone with a tight range raises from early position. While you probably have around 33-percent equity, you can find better spots. If you are in middle position with something like 6-5, everyone folds to you and you have 3BBs, go all-in every time. You will probably be called, but even then, you will usually have 40-percent equity. As you can see, even with 3BBs, you need to be getting all-in very often.