Tournament Poker Strategy
You should already be aware that playing tournaments is very different to cash games. They are entirely different entities for a number of reasons. For one, tournaments have constantly changing environments and factors. This includes the rising blind levels, constant movement of new players to different tables, and the inclusion of antes. Secondly, in most tournaments you only have one chipstack and cannot risk it (as opposed to cash games where you can re-buy) – this inevitably changes your poker tournament strategy.
Lastly, tournaments require you to constantly accumulate chips and play more aggressive than cash games. This forces you to enter more pots, bluff, and steal more chips than you would in a regular cash game.
Overall, a few important moves that you’ll need to implement in tournaments include: 3betting, squeeze play, blind stealing (and re-stealing), limp-shoving, blind defending and cbetting.
How to Play Poker Tournaments
To begin with, tournaments can be separated into three crucial stages: – the early stage, middle state, and final stage. Each of these requires a slightly differently angle or style of play.
Early Tournament Strategy
When you begin a tournament (and for the first 5 or so blinds levels) you should be playing super tight. This means you should only be entering/raising pots with premium hands such as AA, KK, QQ and AK/AQ. All other hands outside this starting range should only be played cheaply, or if in position (late position). Strictly speaking, the better your hand, the more you can afford to enter pots in earlier positions.
Marginal hands such as low pocket pairs should only be played if there is implied value (i.e. more than 4 callers in the pot). Dog hands such as rag ace or 36 off suit should never-ever be played.
Bad tournament players play far too many hands at this stage, and this is what loses them most of their chips and causes them to bust early.
It’s also very important to not bother with blind-stealing or worry about doubling up during this period (blinds will be very low value and not be worth targeting/defending– they are worth around 1% of your entire stack). All this can be done in the middle stages.
Middle Tournament Strategy
This is the most crucial stage which is where you need to accumulate most your chips. The blinds will be worth much more here (up to 5% of your stack), so you should be actively looking to steal and re-steal as many pots as possible pre-flop. You shouldn’t go crazy, but it’s definitely important to be accumulating chips as quickly and effectively as possible. Stealing from late-position on a weak table with limpers for example is a fundamental principle.
You should also be entering and playing pots with a greater range of starting hands. Good hands such as middle-high pocket pairs, AJ, and high suited connectors should be treated as premium hands here. You should be raising in position, taking advantage of weak players, and possibly be playing more aggressively pre-flop with continuation bets.
Notably, tournaments with many new players will not notice all the time that you are bluffing; so you will be much more successful in low stakes games during the middle stage than at professional/live games (new players don’t learn to play aggressively enough at this stage).
When you are approaching the bubble (pay-off places), you should be playing much tighter due to ICM principles which cannot be explained in the length of this article. All you do need to know is that playing tighter at this stage has a positive EV, because it prevents any risk of going broke or busting shortly before a payday. You should avoid going all-in in early position or against big stacks, unless you are sure you have him dominated (however you can still play aggressively against small stack players who are worth less than 10xBBs).
Final Tournament Strategy
As the tournament whittles down to the final table you should make big adjustments your game. As the table becomes short-handed you’ll need to open up your hand range to include virtually any pocket pairs, face cards, suited connectors or any high suited cards. Likewise you should never slow-play against opponents with premium hands. You should actively be 3/4betting pre-flop with strong hands or bluffing.
At the final table you should also try to avoid confrontations with deep-stacked players. If you focus on targeting small stack and tight players, you will accumulate much more chips and have more success bluffing and stealing pots.
Most importantly perhaps, you should learn heads up strategy. All the best poker tournaments have a top heavy payoff structure, which means 1st place will normally make twice as much as 2nd. There is no point making it all to the final heads up round if you don’t know how to successfully play heads up. This will put a huge dent in your potential tournament earnings.
