In this article, we are going to run through some tips on how the best tournament players build big stacks in order to win tournaments, let’s dive right in…
Don’t be scared of going bust in a tournament
You are going to want to be willing to lose your stack in any pot you play, this way you will always have an edge over your opponent if they aren’t willing to die, in a tournament sense obviously.
This will give you a better chance of deep runs and big stacks because we will be getting super aggressive with all our good draws and looking to push our opponents off their hands.
Go for the win
Deeper in tournaments you are going to get some borderline spots when you are short-handed on final tables, this is the point when the most aggressive players will come through with the chip lead and have the best chance at winning the tournament and bagging the biggest prize.
Pick spots against the tighter opponents on your table and try and chip up and gain momentum.
Look to exploit weak tournament players
On your way through your games, you should notice players are playing too tight then look to get aggressive versus them and on the other side of that coin bluff less against players that aren’t making folds.
You are not going to want to play this way against good players that will look to adjust to your tendencies, however, as in the game of playing exploitative poker people can look to exploit your tendencies back at you… So in general try and play a solid balanced strategy until you notice certain players styles and then mix up your game by looking to get in pots with them.
Pay attention to antes
there are certain levels in tournament poker where it is very beneficial to steal the blinds and antes. Some antes are larger than others, try and use small raises to profitably steal the pot from late position, especially as we mentioned in the previous tip against tighter opponents that don’t defend their blinds with a wide enough range.
Don’t be afraid to defend your Big Blind with a short stack.
Too many players rock up when they have a below 20BB stack but this is the point when defending our blinds can be a good strategy, as we are going to have some easy stack to pot ratio decisions on flops where we have a good piece of equity.
Where we may get in trouble defending hands that make weak top pair hands, when we are short stacked playing these holdings and draws a like as check raises gives us a huge boost to our stack even for the times we get our opponent to fold.
Realise how much your chips are worth on the Bubble.
This is a big part of every tournament, you are going to want to go into one of two modes, all or nothing or.
If you have a big stack you are going to want to put your opponents to the test for all their chips because risking a short stack on the bubble is risky business.
On the flip side if you have a small stack you are going to want to rock up as risking doubling a short stack has little value compared to cashing the tournament and then spinning up your stack. Being ICM conscience on bubbles will bag you a big ROI.
A good training for these types of decisions is the SNG coach which you can use on the ICMizer website, trial questions are free and the full software is very affordable. This is a handy way to learn how to play against different stack sizes to apply ICM pressure and learn when you should be risking your tournament life. Even the best players can learn from this as the close decisions can be tricky to learn the ranges.
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