Basic Tournament Strategy

At the start of any tournament, whether it's limit or no limit, online poker or brick and mortar, the blinds, in proportion to the stack sizes, are relatively small. During this stage of the tournament, you should limp in with far more hands than you normally would.

Now, limping in with weak hands wouldn't be as effective if most players played rationally according to pot size early in the tournament. That is to say, it's not very logical to bet 1,000 chips into a pot with 100 in it. The bet puts you at too much risk if you're trying to just steal the pot, and if you're likely to be good, you've got a good chance of scaring out all the hands that you beat.

However, if you observe that another player at the table is willing to make this kind of over-bet with questionable cards, which is typical in the early stages of poker tournaments at almost any level, you want to play as many hands with him as cheaply as you can. For a minimal investment of chips you're giving yourself an excellent opportunity to double up. This applies to limit tournaments as well, although to a lesser degree. Since limit tournaments, in the early stages, are often capped at every round of betting, getting to the flop cheaply is great whenever you have the chance.

Somewhat related to this is a very specific piece of advice for no limit hold 'em. players. In the first 3 or 4 hands, try as hard as you can to get all your money in pre-flop with QQ, KK, AA, even if it means pushing all in UTG. Hopefully, you won't be reduced to that and you can count on somebody else to raise your opening raise, or to raise in front of you, but make sure to get that overbet in rather than waiting for a flop. In the first few hands of a tournament there is so much maniac action that you are very likely to get an all-in pre-flop push called by hands that are questionable at best. This applies especially to online betting. While the players are typically better online, you will find a few more true maniacs in the early stages of the tournament.

After this initial stage of the tournament you want to tighten up and play fundamentally sound poker. However, when you reach the latter stages of the tournament, when the blinds have risen to a significant portion of the average stack size, now it's time to loosen up again. While before we took a loose passive approach, now we'll take a loose aggressive one. Players who do not aggressively defend their blinds at this stage of the tournament have to be exploited. Open up your raising requirements a good bit, and raise them mercilessly. Also, if you're table is passive enough that you can get away with it, be willing to raise from early position.

This strategy is particularly effective when the tournament is approaching “the bubble.” Players are so concerned with not getting busted before getting some money back, that they will play far too conservatively and allow their stacks to be whittled down.

My parting piece of advice is to get unusually aggressive when you only have 20x the big blind, and extremely aggressive once you're down to 10x the big blind. At this point in the tournament you will need to double up quickly, otherwise the blinds will siphon off what's left of your stack, and that will be the story of your tournament life. By making large pre-flop bets (backed up by the rest of your stack), or just pushing pre-flop, you turn into a dangerous player that has a chance of accumulating some chips. All but the biggest stacks will be reluctant to call you when they know they'll have to win a race to not lose a good portion of their chips. This aggressive strategy will give you the best chance to mount a comeback.

Oh, and one last thing, don't blow your winnings at the casino slot machine! I wish I would have heard that one a long time ago.