We have compiled some great Tournament Poker Tips for players of all calibers to browse through before firing up at the tables, these can serve as a good starting mindset for when you are about to try and beat some opponents on the tables.
Tip #1
Don’t be afraid to 3bet the maniacs!
You are going to have players on your table that are raising with junk hands and playing them aggressively. When you see these players exposing their plays counter them with a solid 3 betting for value range. Most players even if they are aggressive are not going to merge their 4bets, meaning they will only put in the fourth bet with a value hand, but if they are calling your 3 bets with all their worse hands, you are building a pot for value against a weaker range whilst finding out if they have a monster hand.
What does this game plan look like post flop?
This will give us a huge nut advantage on most boards, any high card flops will be ours to barrel off on as on board like A K 6 for example, we have to imagine such aggressive players would have 4bet us with hands like AK, therefore it is going to be hard for them to call us down in a lot of these spots.
Tip #2
Try and think about your opponents’ range
When raising from the button with J♠ J♣ and you get a call from the big blind with the flop bringing 4♣ 6♠ 7♠
Try and think about range advantages, you are not going to have 46, 47, 67, 74, 58, 89, 35 in your range as much as your opponent will, therefore they have a huge advantage on this board. So even in hands like this where you may have your opponent beat right now, you are going to want to get to showdown, so betting this flop is not a good start to doing that as we are going to be put under a lot of pressure from check-raises with just one pair here.
Tip #3
Have a plan for coming streets of action
We raise with J♠ 9♠ get one caller and see a board of 8♠ 7♣ 2♣ we decide to Cbet this board as we have all overpairs and sets in our range, however, what will we do against more action. So before betting here, it is important to try and think ahead a little…
What do we do if our opponent raises this flop?
Well, we could call if we are getting a good price and have good implied odds of hitting a straight, one of our over cards or a spade on the turn and fold if we are getting a bad price.
What cards will we continue to bet on if we get called on this flop?
We could continue to semi-bluff cards that hit such as any 6 giving us a double gutshot straight draw, any spade giving us a flush draw and any ten for the nut straight obviously.
What cards will I shutdown/take a free card on?
A good plan in general in poker is if you having bluffs called on flops and the turn is a complete blank, don’t fire again, as nothing on the board has changed, so there is probably not going to be a different decision when it comes to your opponent deciding to call a bet or not.
Tip #4
Have a balanced range
This applies for many situations, you don’t want to be too easy to read, for instance, when it comes to Cbetting flops, you are going to want to merge in some strong hands with your check back flop range along with some of your weaker hands you may give up with. This will make you tricky to read as to when you will delayed Cbet for value or when this will just be a bluff given the new information your opponent has now checked twice to you.
Another good example of when you need a balanced range is when you are opening sub 20bbs as a steal or inducing action, as we will be looking to jam hands like AJo, 77+ with this type of stack to get calls from worse hands, however, we can look to steal with hands like 87s, A2s etc off this stack and mix this with our inducing hands like JJ, QQ, KK, AA, AQ, AK.
Long term this is tough to play against, as we may min raise fold off 18bbs in a tournament and a player could pick up on that, but as a balanced strategy, we will also be min raise calling our strong hands so we cannot be exploited.
Tip #5
Make more steal attempts to tight players in blinds
Raising from late position with a wide range of hands against tight players in the blind can be very profitable. Try and make note of when players to your left are tight as if you notice this it is good to really apply the pressure and build a stack, on the other side of that scale, you are going to want to tighten your opening ranges against loose/aggressive players in the blinds.
With blinds at 50/100 with a running ante of 10 this means on a 9 handed table there are 240 chips in the middle pre-flop. Therefore if we open to 2.4x in late position making it 240 chips to go for the blinds to call, this only has to work 50% of the time as a steal to make a profit on this move. So if we do this 10 times and it only takes down the pot 6/10 times, we are still in profit from being aggressive in late position.
Tip #6
Defend in the Big Blind with a wide range
Following on to our point from Tip #5, good players are going to be stealing from late position, so it’s important to widen our starting hand requirements from the big blind. There are two main reasons for this, we are getting a better price to enter the pot with having money already invested and secondly, our opponents’ ranges are going to be wider, therefore, we need less equity, in the long run, to compete with these hands we are going to be up against.
Calling bets with hands like 45o and 74s is a must, even though if you are a tight player you may feel out of depth a little taking flops with these holdings, you will be able to get into some spots where you can have a range advantage and really push the action against your opponents. Remember our point from earlier, what will my hand look like for my opponent, it’s important to try and make things happen in poker tournaments, you can’t just sit back and get big stacks waiting for huge coolers to go your way, jump in and try and outplay some people with check raises when you think they are just stealing especially when the board favours your calling range.
Be wary of playing hands in multiway pots that are going to be hard to realise equity with, for hands going multiway try and use more connected type holdings rather than hands like A7o for example, as these hands can be tough to play in anything other than heads up pots.
Tip #7
Learn how to close the deal
Just like in business poker rewards the people who finish strong, getting 7th place in a tournament is not where the money is, all the money is in the top spots, so the better you are at these aggressive endings the better ROI (Return on investment) you are going to see.
A handy tip for learning short-handed can be to play some Sit n Go’s, or short-handed games as these ranges are completely different to the hands you will look to play in a full ring game scenario.
A little look into the world of ICM (Independent Chip Model) should be an eye opener for anyone not aware, there are great simulations for these important decisions on apps like ICMizer, we will dive a little deeper into these concepts in another post.