Playing Tournament Poker-Basic and Advanced Strategy Concepts

By HHA

When you play in a poker tournament your strategy should be different form the one you use in ring games. Usually, you will look for great odds, positive pot odds and position, but you have to add something of the outmost importance at a tournament: you have to survive at all cost. If you lose your chips you are done. If you keep this idea in your mind you can use it to your advantage. Most novice players don't realize this fact, so you better take this seriously so you don't get knocked out early for being such a player. You get the most out of this advantage when your opponent knows just enough about early tournament elimination to be afraid of being kicked out.

You should avoid the mistake of playing every hand just for its value. Even if you happen to get a couple of A's dealt in a satellite table, you should fold if 2 players with small stacks go all in. If one of them loses, the others get a seat at a tournament. However, this strategy almost always is the wrong call if you are playing in a standard tournament. Also, if you keep track of the chip status of your opponents, this is an almost unimportant factor at ring games.

Other advanced strategy to remember is that when calling a raise your hand needs to be better than if you are calling an initial raise; this is called the gap concept and it could be applied to any kind of poker game you are playing, but it is more important in tournament play since you can't just pull more money from your pocket at any given time, and you can risk your stack in an early play and lose all your chances.

Tournament play favors tight play and facing fewer players at the pots heads-up is a common situation. Players tend to have a lot smaller stacks and the blinds grow up a lot faster. Loose hands in a ring game are traps for tournament play. You have to really take care of the outs of every hand you play; strong players will avoid calling when there is a possible flush in the turn, so playing this kind of hand just is not worth the risk.

Also, the structure of play will change the kind of strategy you have to use. For example, in limit Texas Hold them small pairs and suited connectors rarely have pot odds. In no limit Hold them there are a lot more factors to take into consideration like your position when facing an opponent; this is a crucial factor in no limit while having almost no importance in limit Hold them. Keep this in mind if you are planning to call a raise, because if you call out of position you can get trapped.

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