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
I have been guilty of falling into a robotic playing style.
I have been guilty of falling into a robotic playing style. For about three months a few years back I decided to work on my full-ring game by multi-tabling cash games online. I start playing nine tables, which I had no problem with. After a while, I was playing 24 tables at the same time. While I was still winning a small amount of money, it wasn’t improving my poker game. I was just mindlessly grinding. The whole reason I play the various forms of holdem, like sitngos, six-handed cash games, nine-handed cash games, etc., is to become a better all-around holdem player. I don’t play these games to make money, even though that is a nice side benefit. If you aren’t focusing on the game, you are basically playing to pass the time.
If you want to improve your game,
If you want to improve your game, play few enough tables that you can still concentrate on what is going on. You must be able to follow every hand and actively put each player on a range. You need to pay attention to every detail about the table while you are playing, such as your opponent’s statistics, everyone’s stack size and the payout structure if you’re playing a tournament. Some players can only do this while playing four tables at a time. I find that once I play more than nine tables or so, I shift to autopilot. This problem has a simple solution. Don’t play more tables than you can handle without playing like a robot. In live poker, don’t do things that can distract you from the game, such as watching sports or texting on your phone. If you actively put players on ranges and generate reads, your poker skill set will grow rapidly.