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
Never give up when you get down to a fairly short stack.
Never give up when you get down to a fairly short stack. I have seen some marvelous comebacks. In a WPT event in Biloxi, Bill Edler came back from one chip to win the tournament. I, on the other hand, went from having half the chips when we got down to 10 people to busting out in seventh place. I lost flips with A-K a few times, and then lost with Q-Q vs. Q-8, but that’s beside the point. Never give up as long as you have chips.
In the 2010 WSOP
In the 2010 WSOP I saw a player get down to around 5BBs in a $1,500 tournament when he lost with A-A vs. K-K for a 100BB pot. He pushed on the next hand with 9-3 and doubled up to 10BBs. The very next hand someone raised, someone else re-raised, he called off with 7-3o and doubled to 25BBs or so. The next hand everyone folded to him, he open-pushed with 7-4o and lost to J-J. Clearly this is a huge mistake, as a 10BB stack, and especially a 25BB stack has a lot of equity.