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 may have heard that you do not want to be dominated,
You may have heard that you do not want to be dominated, meaning you want your kicker to be higher than your opponent’s. This is true, but in deep-stacked poker, as long as you play well, being dominated isn’t too terrible. Suppose your opponent raises with A-Q to 3BBs out of a 200BB stack and you re-raise with A-10. Your opponent calls. He will check to you on any flop that doesn’t contain an ace or queen, and you will make a standard bet to pick up the pot. An ace or queen will only come around 30 percent of the time, so you win this 20BB pot 70 percent of the time right from the start if you know our opponent will not play back at you too often. If a queen comes, he will check-call or check-raise on the flop and you will be done with the hand. If an ace comes, you will bet the flop. If raised, you can call, and then fold to further aggression or even fold on the flop, especially if you know your opponent will rarely bluff. If he just calls when an ace flops, you will check behind on the turn for pot control and call a river bet. When an ace and a 10 come, you will usually win a ton of money because you can get three full streets of value, often stacking your opponent.
As you can see, position is powerful. If you always folded weak hands
As you can see, position is powerful. If you always folded weak hands from early and middle position while playing deep-stacked poker, it wouldn’t be much of a mistake. If you play in position more than your opponents, you are almost guaranteed to win in the long run.