Beginner’s Tournament Strategy Guide

The rising blind levels and top-heavy payout structures of online poker tournaments dictate that strategy is different from that of poker cash games. Those players who adapt successfully will find that online poker tournaments are an extremely profitable form of the game. This article looks at the various stages of a poker tournament and highlights the important strategy changes and considerations for each stage.

Early Stages 

The early stages of poker tournament play involve a common dilemma. At this point in the game the proportion of weak (bad) opponents will never be greater, which gives you an excellent opportunity to accumulate chips. However, these same opponents are dangerous – and can easily decimate your stack with a lucky suck-out on the turn of river.

Strategy changes which avoid these problems include favoring those hands which can hit a hidden monster on the flop. Both suited connectors and small pairs are playable before the flop, those times you hit a hidden straight or set then you are likely to win your opponent’s entire stack. Bluff less and value-bet more often with weaker hands (for example top pair) during the early stages of online poker tournaments.

Middle Stages

During the middle stages of poker tournaments the field will be significantly smaller and the blinds a larger proportion of your stack. Play now is based on stack-size considerations as well as the requirement to ‘stay ahead of the blinds’. Stealing blinds without holding a strong hand is a must. Choose those times when small or large stacks are not involved in the hand – small stacks will sometimes call as they are ‘desperate’ and large stacks because their risk (in terms of tournament life) is limited.

Frequently stealing pots will have the added advantage of maintaining an ‘active’ table image which will help you to get paid off when you finally hit a premium hand.

Bubble Strategy

The bubble is the stage of the poker tournament where there are just a few players to go before the paying places begin. At this stage many of your opponents will tighten up considerably – looking to safely make the money before taking any risks. You can take advantage of this tendency by raising frequently, stealing pots where no other player has shown any strength. Again medium – stacks are your best targets since they are reluctant to give up their comfortable chip position without a premium hand.

Be aware that the initial money bubble may be the first of several bubbles in a large poker tournament. The point where 1 more player needs to be eliminated before the final table is another bubble-type situation, as are situations where there are significant payout jumps. Even if the jumps mean little to you, finding which opponents think that the additional money is important can help you to profit from tournament play.

Strategy ‘In The Money’

Remember that tournament payouts are heavily weighted towards the final table, and once there towards the top three paying places. Your strategy should be to take calculated risks to reach the final table every time. Again identifying those opponents who are trying to ‘move up the money’ is important. Stealing and re-stealing from timid and overly-aggressive opponents is also key.

Once you reach the final table then the stack sizes of opponents can be used to help determine your strategy. For example if there are a couple of mini-stacks who fold in a given hand then other opponents with more comfortable stacks will not want to go broke before they bust – you can take advantage of this by raising more liberally.

To summarize, success in online poker tournaments involves adapting to the various stages that a tournament goes through. This starts with the wild yet ‘deep-stacked’ early stages and finishes with the important stack-size dynamics of the final table. Adapting correctly will make poker tournaments a potentially very profitable form of poker.

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