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
Suppose an aggressive opponent raises from middle position
Suppose an aggressive opponent raises from middle position and you are on the cutoff. Again, everyone has a fairly deep stack. In this spot, you can re-raise with a very wide range. In fact, your hand doesn’t actually matter that much, as most of your value will come from making your opponent fold pre-flop or winning with a continuation bet on the flop. What is most important here is what percentage of your opponent’s raising range he will fold pre-flop, and how often he will fold on the flop if he does call. Since we know this player is aggressive, he will probably fold a decent amount of his hands pre-flop, so re-raising with a wide range is probably a good play, as long as you do not abuse it. So, you can re-raise with literally any two cards in this spot, although I wouldn’t suggest playing quite so loose. I would re-raise 9-9+, A-K, A-10 to A-2, K-J to K-9, Q-9+, J-8+, 10-7+ and random suited cards like K-5s and 8-6s. Notice that I suggest just calling with some strong hands, namely A-Q, A-J, K-Q, small pairs and suited connectors. It would be a disaster to raise one of these hands and be forced off a hand with a lot of equity by a re-raise. Besides, it is usually best to just call with small pairs and good suited connectors, as they flop too well to turn them into a bluff.
If called, you should make a continuation bet on every flop,
If called, you should make a continuation bet on every flop, as you are representing a strong hand by re-raising pre-flop. Again, do not go overboard with these plays or they will become unprofitable. If your opponent knows you are going to re-raise with a wide range, he will start calling with a wider range, or even four-bet, which is never good when you have a bad hand. Note also that while you can re-raise with A-x, don’t just call, because you will often be dominated. Either re-raise or fold hands that tend to have large reverse implied odds, such as A-8, K-10 and Q-10. These hands are basically stone bluffs. Even if you hit a decent hand like top pair, if your opponent is willing to put in a lot of money, your top pair with bad kicker is almost always behind and should be folded.