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5 Tips for Winning a Poker Tournament
Teaser: Tournaments can be some of the most lucrative endeavors for poker players. From million dollar invitationals to micro-stakes Sit-n-Gos, winning a tournament means big money. Here are five pieces of advice to help you take down a tournament. Playing winning tournament poker requires a different focus than playing winning cash game poker. Here are five tips to help you on your path to a WSOP bracelet. 1. Pick on Persons: Get yourself into pots with weak poker players. Look for players continuously calling the big blind and raise them late in hands. And don’t be dismayed if they call you on the flop – keep firing away on the turn and river. You’d be shocked at how many players are willing to stick around for very questionable draws and you should be looking to take advantage of these players. Stay away from very aggressive players, especially early in the tournament. Remember that in a cash game you can lose everything and buy back in, while in a tournament (or at least a no-rebuy tournament) you can only go broke once. 2. The Four Phases: There are four major phases in each tournament for the successful tourney pro. These four phases dictate four different styles of play: • Survival: The first phase of the tournament is survival. Especially in MTTs, there is an initial wave of super-aggressive action players who are looking to do the poker equivalent of marking their territory. And with the blinds so low, there really is no need to get involved. Look to stay out of most hands unless you pick up Jacks or better, and even hooks can get mucked pre-flop early on. Look to see cheap flops with suited connectors and get big time value when you flop a monster. Be careful with medium monsters like two-pair and sucker straights and trap when you pick up a real monster. Do not fall into the speculation trap though – don’t start calling under the gun with small pocket pairs in the hopes of sneaking into a full house. Don’t think too much about bluffing and remember a middle pair is not a great hand. No hero calls early in the tournament – play it safe and survive. • Accumulation: Once the blinds start to creep up and around half the field has been eliminated it is time to switch gears. Here you are looking to play a lot of hands with position and take big pots post-flop. Look for extremely tight players and bully their blinds – they’ll be happy to relinquish them without much fight, particularly if you have more chips then they do. A fantastic play in this phase is raising/calling pre-flop with position, calling/checking the flop then looking to re-raise on the turn or river. Don’t be afraid to bet strong pre-flop with drawing hands like suited connectors and small pocket pairs as you are looking to take as many pots as possible. • Final Table: You can almost think of the Final Table as a separate tournament – so you want to take it easy until a few people have been eliminated and the blinds become worth stealing. Do not be afraid to re-raise big stack bullies though, especially post flop. One of my favorite plays late in a tournament against an aggressive big stack is to call out of position pre-flop, check-call the flop then bet out strong on the turn or river. This play allows the aggressive big stack to stick his neck out far enough to provide you with the opportunity to go for the jugular. Once the blinds get big and the table short-handed then it’s time to start making big pre-flop raises, especially against big blinds with less in chips than you. You will have to make moves with less than stellar hands and hope not to get called, just try to put yourself in positions where if you are called and lose then you will not be out of the tournament. • Heads Up: The final phase of winning a tournament is “mano a mano” and you have to make the subtle psychological adjustment from wanting to win the tournament to wanting to beat your specific opponent. This means mixing up pre-flop raises with calls, checks, re-raises, trapping, overbetting – every trick in your poker bag has to come out in your Heads up play. Your most creative play should occur when you are Heads up. 3. The Bubble Trouble: One of the most interesting points of any tournament is when the field is closing in on the money. Here you will see a divergent field: many will become super tight as they wait to ensure themselves of a cash finish while a few others will become maniacally aggressive looking to capitalize on those tightening few. I don’t think that you have to go one way or the other – I think that you should stick to your Accumulation phase style of play and let the bubble burst wherever it may. Once the bubble has been burst and everyone remaining in the tournament is already in the money, look to pick off a few loose bets from otherwise tight players who’ve let their hair down. The bubble or money line can figure prominently into a lot of play – don’t let it influence yours. 4. Take Breaks: Don’t be afraid to sit out for a few hands if you feel yourself slipping. Whether it is a live or online tournament, make sure that you are at the top of your game. Sometimes getting up for ten minutes from the table is worth a lot more than the blinds you’ll lose. And above all else, don’t make that internal decision that while you are sitting at the table receiving cards, you are actually “on break” and will only play great cards. If you find yourself thinking this then you are either A) too tired to focus on playing poker or B) on tilt. Either way, you are going to lose your money. Get up, take a few hands off and don’t even think about poker. Get it out of your mind. 5. Practice Heads Up Play: Playing Heads up is very different than playing full ring games. Every poker site offers dozens of Heads up games for every stake level imaginable. If you really want to win a tournament rather than just finish in the money then you have to make sure that you practice playing Heads up. A lot of things have to go right to win any tournament, particularly a vast MTT. First of all, you have to identify what phase of the tournament you are in and adjust your play accordingly. Secondly and most importantly, you have to not get unlucky: you have to win with Aces against pocket eights along with conventional races like Queens against AK. The trick is to put yourself in those race positions as infrequently as possible, all the more so in situations where you would have to go all-in. Remember that a bad fold costs you some chips but a bad all-in can cost you the tournament. About Us: This article was published courtesy of PocketFives.com. Pocket Fives (www.pocketfives.com) is a site dedicated to Online Poker. Our goal is to expand the online poker community through our Poker Discussion Board, Online Tournament Player Rankings, Site Reviews, Poker Articles, and Blogs.
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