Poker Tournament Strategy
Poker tournaments have never been more popular online and they are
flooded with the most amount of traffic at poker rooms. The biggest
weekly tournaments, such as the PokerStars Sunday Million receives well
over 7,000 entrants on average and throughout the year you can find
massive online tournament series such as the WCOOP, FTOPS, Min-FTOPS and
UBOC.
Knowing how to start-off in tournaments and make it to the bubble
however is crucial to success. The bigger tournaments have massive
fields to compete with, and because you only have one chance to stack
off with opponents with your tournament strategy should be very
different to cash games.
First of all, at the beginning of tournaments up until the first antes
kick in you need to play extremely tight. Don’t both limping in with
non-premium hands outside JJ+/AJ+ from early position or even suited
connectors. You have to keep very TAG and only enter pots with your top
5% of starting hands or only limp from late position. In terms of
set-mining in the early stages of tournaments when the stacks are 1500
and blinds 15/30, I think it’s fine. With an M-ratio of 50 you can
easily afford to limp into raised or un-raised pre-pots in the hope of
catching a set. The implied odds and number of chips behind you also
make this profitable.
When the middle stages and antes kick in you need to seriously up the
aggression. The key to winning multi-table tournaments is to build
chips as quickly as possible to keep up with the rising blinds.
Aggressive moves such as double barrelling, blind stealing, value
shoving and squeeze play are all very important skills to master. Blind
stealing for instance means that when there are short stacks or tight
players on the blinds you should be 3betting light or “stealing” in
position from the cut off or LP. Blind stealing hands can more or less
include anything, however like to make moves with hands that have “outs”
such as suited connectors, pocket pairs, broadway cards and AJo or
higher. Some players are different but when you’re up against a tight
player on the blinds and it fold rounds to you you just have to take
these chances.
Whenever you’re dealt premium hands like JJ+ or AJ+ in a tournament you
have to play these thick and fast by 3betting or 4bet-shoving for value.
Unlike cash games, where the small blinds allow you to slow-play such
hands and trap opponents, in tournaments you can’t do this. Tournaments
run much faster than cash games and you have to stack off or start
shoving these over 3bets from early position.
As you head towards the bubble, the majority of players will tighten up
due to a concept called the Independent Chip Model (ICM) which basically
means players don’t want to risk busting out just before they reach the
payoff places. Being aware of ICM is important because when it comes
to $EV (tournament equity) as opposed to cEV (chip equity) decisions, a
lot of your coin-flip situations means they’re unprofitable and you
should instead. Even if someone pushes in front of you and you believe
you’re a 60% favourite (e.g. AK vs QJ) the risk involves still makes
folding a better option. Although it might not make sense, while
playing tight you also have to expose and take advantage of the table if
it tightens up too much. You can do this by raising first in, stealing
the blinds or even shoving from early positions on occasions.
Finally, as the game dwindles down to the final table and the table
becomes short-handed, you have to start opening up your starting hand
range and be willing to get your chips in with any Ax, Kx or pocket
pairs hands. The average chip stack at the final table is only 20 big
blinds which means if you’re going to call the flop you have to either
3bet or shove all-in. There is literally no room for messing around
with open-raises or limping.
