Poker Tournament Tips

To win an online multi-table poker tournament, you can’t just rely on getting dealt premium hands. You’ll need to bluff, steal blinds, check-raise, and pull all sorts of tricky manoeuvres, but above all, you must be aggressive, right to the very end. Here are a few tournament tips that will help you get to the final table and take home the big prizes a bit more often:

1. Bet big hands aggressively

In most online tournaments, there are lots of players who are willing to call all the way to the river with weak hands, or weak draws. These players will call huge bets down with top pair/medium kicker because they don’t believe that someone would bet two-pair, a set, or a straight so hard. Most people like to slow play their big hands, and even give free cards, so by betting your big hands aggressively, you may actually be MORE likely to get called. You’ll also get some calls from players paying too much to draw, so make sure you charge them the maximum all the way.

2. Call raises with your low pairs early

In the early stages of most multi-table tournaments you usually have 75-150 big blinds, so seeing some flops with your low pocket pairs isn’t going to damage your stack very much, even if you fold every time you miss your set. The times you DO hit a set though will give you an excellent chance to win a big pot, or even double up.

Your implied odds at this early stage of the tournament are usually so big that it can be worth investing as much as 1/20th or 5% percent of your stack to try and hit a set. If you are in position, you can profitably call for almost 10% of your stack, particularly with the larger pocket pairs, as you might be able to win the pot by betting even when you miss your set.

3. Semi-bluff your drawing hands

Let’s assume that you raised with two big suited cards (such as AK) and had one caller. Now the flop has comes 7 high. You would usually make a C-Bet on this sort of a flop anyway, to try and win the pot immediately. If you have flopped a flush draw to go with your overcards however, you can be extremely aggressive, raising your opponents bet, firing another barrel on the turn, or even check raising if you thing your opponent will bet when you check. You can often check raise all-in on a flop like this, with nothing except 2 overcards and a flush draw, because you will usually have 15 outs (9 cards that make a flush, and 6 cards that give you top pair top kicker), so you are actually a FAVOURITE in the hand against someone with a weak overpair like 99. Combined with the chance that your opponent will just fold and give up the hand, aggressive play when you have a healthy flush draw is an excellent way to accumulate chips.

4. The Shove

Many players, particularly when they are new, will let themselves get blinded down so low that their stack is no longer intimidating. This means that when the push all in, one (or both) of the players in the blinds will call them, just because they are getting good Pot Odds. Even if the short stack doubles up in this situation, they will still only have 7 or 8 blinds, and will need to push all in again very soon to avoid getting blinded down again! When your total stack is down to around 10 big blinds is when you have to start shoving all-in. At 10 blinds you still have enough chips that people cant call you with any old rubbish, so you have a good chance of winning the blinds uncontested.

You’ll need to pick the right spot to make you move, as the stack sizes of the players in the blinds can be even more important than your cards. Make sure you’re the first player into the pot (unless you have a premium hand), that way you have the maximum chance of everyone giving up the blinds without a fight.

If the action is folded around to you in late position, you can push all in with any ace, any pair, or any suited connector. The closer you are to the button the looser you can be with your hand, simply because there is less chance that one of the remaining players will have a good enough hand to call you.

The best time to push is when the blinds have medium sized stacks. If they have less than you, they might be getting desperate, and decide to call with any 2 cards. Likewise if the players in the blinds each have very large stacks they won’t be scared of you and may call light too. The best stacks to push into are medium stacks, as they are the players who you can damage the most. They won’t want to risk a large proportion of their stack with anything but a premium hand. Even when they do call, 5-6 suited will beat A-K about 40% of the time, which will bring you well and truly back into the game.