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Before the Flop

Before the Flop Before the flop in deep-stacked no-limit holdem tournaments, you can get away with playing most hands in many ways. Despite this, playing a decent mix of hands in an aggressive manner, in position, is the optimal way to play, as it will keep you out of trouble while building pots when you are usually the favorite to win the hand. It is important to balance the way you play each hand. For example, if someone raises in front of you, sometimes you should just call with A-K and sometimes you should re-raise. Call in this spot from time to time so your opponents can’t discount strong hands from your range when you just call. You should vary between re-raising, calling and folding hands like 9-6 on the button when someone raises from middle position. Simply put, you should show up with a fairly wide range of hands with each action you take.

In deep-stacked no-limit holdem tournaments,

In deep-stacked no-limit holdem tournaments, if a lot of money goes into the pot before the flop, you usually need A-A or K-K to be comfortable unless you’re up against a super-loose and aggressive opponent. Suppose you raise Q-Q from first position and you’ re re-raised by a fairly tight opponent who isn’t known for fancy play. In this spot, it’s almost always correct to just call with deep stacks. If you raise again and he pushes, you will be in a tough spot because his range is probably something like Q-Q+ and A-K. You have 40-percent equity against this range, so if you’re getting better than 1.5-to-1, you should usually call off for your stack, but if you lose—and you usually will—you will miss out on all the future value in the tournament when people will just hand you their stacks. So, don’t put too much money in the pot before the flop unless you have A-A or K-K.