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 can be a little more patient with a 4- or 5BB stack,
You can be a little more patient with a 4- or 5BB stack, as you have a tiny bit of fold equity, especially in late position. If you have 5BBs on the button, go all-in with any two cards if everyone folds to you, because you have decent fold equity. If you go all-in with all hands with a 2,000-chip stack playing 200/400-25, you think the small and big blinds will call 20 percent and 40 percent of the time, respectively, they will never both call, and you have 40-percent equity when called, you can expect a profit of 0.55(1,100) + 0.45[0.4(4,500) -2,000] = 405 chips. So, even by pushing a tiny stack with any two cards, you will make 400 chips on average every time you go all-in on the button, assuming those calling ranges. If you have no fold equity though, you should only push hands with more equity. Clearly, if you have a good hand like J-10 that will have something like 50-percent equity, you have a no-brainer push.
If someone raises in front of you
If someone raises in front of you and you have a 5BB stack, you should usually go all-in with anything that you think has around 40-percent equity. So, if a loose player raises from the cutoff, you have something like J-10 and you know that player will raise 2-2+, A-2+, K-6+, Q-9+, J-8+, 10-7+, 9-6+, 8-6+, 7-5+, 6-5, 5-4 and a few random junk hands, go all-in for sure because you always have around 50-percent equity. A-2, 2-2 and K-9 all have around 50-percent equity as well. So, you can actually get in with slightly worse hands than these, even if someone has raised in front of you and you know you will be called.