(Part 1) The SECRET to Winning an Online Poker Tournament!
However, you should always remember that the variance factor in tournaments is huge, and you should also always practice good bankroll management. Because of all this, you want to 3-bet with a polarized range, and remove hands like Q-Jo, A-To, etc from your 3-betting range with a large stack-to-pot ratio. Defending offsuit hands with large gaps is only asking for difficult and messy situations. A : The big blind. If the big blind is tight enough to be folding hands like Q-5s or K-7o to your opens, raising o would show an immediate profit. I personally flat almost any two cards against weak opponents, and not even an open from Fedor Holz could get me to fold Q-7o or s. I wrote a long article about this topic see: The Ultimate Guide to Big Blind Defense , which I strongly recommend you read if you want to learn more about the proper big blind defense strategy in tournaments. Instead, just try to get into a lot of pots in position against the fish, 3-betting shamelessly with hands that have good playability, like J-Ts, s, Q-9s and so on. For example:. Learn tactics that work vs. These hands often end up as weak pairs with little chance of reaching showdown not what you want in multi-way pots. Hands like suited are a no-brainer, but even the weakest suited hands usually profit as flats against late position opens. This works out to Even offsuit has more than that against a standard button range it has Does this mean we should call with every hand when our pot odds are this good? So, in a nutshell: Choose blocker hands just below your calling range as 3-bet bluffs against good and aggressive players. Learning to play well with wide ranges will come in handy in all kinds of other tournament situations as well, such as playing the big blind against late position opens. With these stacks, you want to 3-bet bluff with hands slightly worse than your flat hands in the same situation. Miikka Anttonen Poker Strategy May 8, About the Author. Before betting, you should ask yourself two new questions:. In early and middle position most hands are easy decisions between opening and folding — every halfway competent players will open A-Q in every position and fold o without hesitating. Players nowadays are much more aware of how things work, and check-raise bluffing has become both more common and more nuanced. This is Dynamik Widget Area. Hero is dealt two cards UTG Hero raises to Only BB calls. If there was no such thing as post-flop, yes we would defend every hand with raw equity higher than our given price. Join Now.{/INSERTKEYS}{/PARAGRAPH} Before any decision pre-flop, on the flop or on the turn, you should always have a rough plan for each likely outcome. Multi-way pots are a different beast. For example, K-6 on a flop of against a button open is basically a monster. You both have the same amount of sets, but he has all the straights and two pairs whereas you have none of them. His autobiography is Once A Gambler. You can find more valuable poker tips here. Poker Tournament. An estimate will do just fine. {PARAGRAPH}{INSERTKEYS}I assume the searchers are looking for a quick checklist to go over before playing a tournament, and not advice on how much to tip the dealers after a big win. This goes hand in hand with tip 5. Basically, in multi-way pots, you want your decision to be easy. These are never hands that want to play for stacks on virtually any flop. In a heads-up pot, hitting one pair will often win you the pot. This is the bare minimum. Join Our Newsletter Signup today for free poker strategy, exclusive discounts, and be the first to get notified on new updates. Also, studying and practicing heads-up will sharpen your post-flop skills as you become accustomed to playing with wide ranges. Signup today for free poker strategy, exclusive discounts, and be the first to get notified on new updates. That one heads-up battle you get into every few hundred tournaments will often decide your entire monthly profit margin — and the bigger the field is, the more buy-ins there will be at stake. With antes in play, a 2. But just doing the above over and over will be enough to solve most practical situations in real time. Using hands with high card blockers is extremely important as it makes a shove by the opener less likely. A clever player will realize this, and punish our c-bets by check-raising with a variety of hands. You can just do this is in a very simple, logical way. Drop the weaker hands like s and Q-Jo from your range altogether. The following line will be the most important thing you take away from this article unless you already know it :. This strategy is particularly effective against regulars due to the threat a 4-bet shove poses. Learn more now! But imagine that same situation with K-6o in a 4-way pot — it becomes debatable if you can even call a c-bet. Hero is dealt two cards in the cutoff Middle Position opens to 2. If you have any questions about these poker tournament tips or anything else , feel free to ask me in the comments below or on Twitter chuckbasspoker. You should still be calling with basically any suited hand as well as hands like J-T offsuit. A: Your opponent. But at least make sure to never fold a hand like suited or Q-T offsuit to a single open. Just a rough idea will more than suffice in game. To summarize; with super-deep stacks you want to have a somewhat linear, high card-heavy 3-betting range against fish, and a polarized 3-betting range against regulars. There is 2, in the pot from blinds and antes and Gary is risking 2, to take it down. So, I decided to try to tackle this subject by myself and create the ultimate list of 7 poker tournament strategy tips for players of all skill levels. These tips should be more than enough to take on whatever tournament you plan on playing. While tournament payout structures vary depending on the poker site or live tournament organizer, the winner of the tournament will always get the biggest chunk of the prize pool by a fair margin. With deeper stacks, your opponents are more incentivized to continue against your 3-bets, which can lead to tough situations with marginal hands. Things change quite dramatically as stacks get closer to big blinds, and the correct approach to 3-betting resembles that of a cash game. A : This the toughest question to answer if we have no reads, because some people still defend their big blind way too infrequently. This is not a flop texture I would c-bet often because it hits my opponent better than it hits me. Note: Want to crush your competition like a Super High Roller? Heck, raising with two napkins you picked up on the floor would show an immediate profit. Against weaker opposition, raising small and often still really works, especially in late position. The big blind has a piece with the vast majority of his flatting range, and overall has a range advantage. This phrase drove the pre-flop strategy of almost every tournament regular for years, and it still has some merit. Against fishy players, it is sometimes better to 3-bet with a linear range — more thin value bets and less bluffs. We just learned that a small open raise only has to work around half of the time to profit. These have great blockers making it less likely that your opponent has a hand that can continue , and flatting them might be a bit on the loose side. No, definitely not. Despite the improved pot odds of multi-way pots, you need to be more picky about your defending hands by choosing ones that play well in multi-way pots. As the big blind, the burden is mostly on us to stop people from raising too often.