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
When you raise more than your fair share of pots,
When you raise more than your fair share of pots, people will eventually start to call. This isn’t a problem if you will be in position in most hands and can induce your opponents to fold post-flop. Because of this, you need to size your raises pre-flop a little larger so you can later make flop and turn bets a little larger, which will get you many more folds. You need to be in position. If you are constantly raising hands out of position, you are destined to lose.
Another huge benefit of this hybrid style
Another huge benefit of this hybrid style that I play is that when you actually get a good hand, instead of winning only a decent amount of chips, you can usually get your opponent’s entire stack. If you min-raise pre-flop and then bet half-pot on the flop, you will find it tough to get your entire stack in if you make a strong hand. If you raise just a tiny bit more pre-flop, you can get all-in as long as your stack is around 80BBs or less, which it will be once you get to the middle stages of most tournaments, because the pot tends to grow exponentially in no-limit holdem.