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
Re-raise fairly tightly from the big blind.
Re-raise fairly tightly from the big blind. Just calling to see a flop usually doesn’t cost much and you don’t have to worry about chasing anyone out of the hand, as in the small blind. I tend to re-raise from the big blind only with good hands against middle- and late-position raisers, and rarely against early-position raisers. I may re-raise with hands such as 8-8+, A-9+, K-10+ and some suited connectors. I re-raise basically every time with the most premium hands, and I usually call when I have a weaker hand with high implied odds, such as 8-8 and 9-8s. Make sure your range is fairly balanced so your opponents can’t narrow you down to 10-10+ and A-K whenever you re-raise from the big blind. If someone constantly steals your blind, it may be good to re-raise occasionally, just to let him know you will not be run over. You can do this with a very wide range because your profit will be from just winning the blinds pre-flop. This has the added benefit of making your opponents raise your blinds less frequently.
I’ll call with a slightly wider range with a raiser
I’ll call with a slightly wider range with a raiser and caller in front of me because I am getting better odds and will usually have relative position on the pre-flop raiser. I call with hands like 2-2+, A-10+, K-J+, Q-10+, J-10 and suited connectors. I will still re-raise with 8-8+, A-9+, K-10+ and some suited connectors.