Poker Tournament Strategy - The Beginning
All Tournaments Have a Beginning, Middle, and End
Strategies suitable for doing well in the beginning of a tournament will do less good, and could even go so far as to be harmful, in the latter stages of a tournament and vice-versa.
In The Beginning of a poker tournament, you may just want to sit back and let some of the more erratic, inexperienced, and wild players duke it out a bit before you jump into the fray. Play tight, check and fold often, play only those most killer of starting hands. Take note of your position and play it to the hilt, though. Jump in occasionally, when the opportunity seems right, to take down a few large pots with a minimal investment and some crafty bluffing – mainly so you don’t tip your hand that you’re really just warming up, waiting around for the inevitable to happen – for a few hasty players to get themselves taken out of the game and for the short stacks to start showing themselves.
Warning – if you do get pegged as trying this Staying-Under-the-Radar tactic, players will react by folding anytime you bet big. Initially, this is a liability, as to discover this has happened requires you lose out on a chance to win a pot or two with some genuinely great cards. Once you’ve clued in however, you can use this turn of the tide to your advantage – knowing that your fellow players see you as always folding except when you have killer cards, you can then start bluffing them out of several large pots with lousy cards.
Don’t worry too much about their initial read on you, though. You have plenty of time to show them how much of a daring and aggressive risk-taker you are later on when the field has whittled down and the stakes are higher. For now just be sure to give yourself plenty of outs.
Tomorrow we will cover how to play through the middle portions of a tournament.