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
The last type of bet I want to discuss
The last type of bet I want to discuss is the bet for information. Unless you are facing extraordinarily straightforward players, betting for information will only cause you trouble. The most standard time you see an information bet is when someone leads into you when you were the pre-flop raiser. Say you raise with a 100BB stack from middle position and the big blind calls. The flop comes J-9-4 and he leads into you for half pot.
You should almost always raise this bet
You should almost always raise this bet if you have a weak hand because by making this bet, your opponent is saying, “I have a hand I don’t want to call a bet with but it also might be good. Is my hand ahead?” Usually your opponent will have something like J-8, 10-9, or A-4 and is trying to “find out where he’s at” by leading into you. When this happens, you should almost always give him bad news by raising, regardless of your cards. If he does call, be prepared to fire every street, unless you know he is the type that will lead with strong hands to try to induce a bluff. Notice also that calling the flop with the intention of bluffing the turn is a great option.