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
All hands listed in the rest of this chapter
All hands listed in the rest of this chapter are assumed to be opening hands, i.e., everyone has folded to you, and you raise before the flop. I do not suggest open-limping any hands pre-flop. There is always value in just raising and picking up the pot pre-flop. Limping negates that edge. While you may play a fairly wide range of hands pre-flop, you must be careful not to put a lot of chips in the pot with a bad hand. When risking small amounts of chips, your hand doesn’t really matter, but you need a monster if lots of chips go in the middle.
Play fairly tight from early position
Play fairly tight from early position because you are basically taking your hand against the best two or three hands from the rest of the table. Most players play a bit tighter than I do from early position. I raise a few more hands because I like to represent a wider range of hands. You will be very exploitable if you only raise 9-9+ and A-Q+ from early position, especially with deep stacks. I tend to raise 2-2+, A-J+ and all suited connectors down to 6-5s. I don’t raise hands like K-J and A-10 from early position because they have huge reverse implied odds. I don’t raise suited connectors all the time, especially if I have a loose image. I raise small pairs and suited connectors because I want to represent a hand on every flop, allowing me to continuation-bet every time. If you raise from early position and the flop comes 5-3-2, you want to be able to represent A-A. If it comes K-Q-2, you want to be able to represent A-K, and if it comes 9-8-5, you want to be able to represent 7-6s. Clearly, if you never have 7-6s in your range, you will be outplayed constantly on these middle-card flops.