Getting deep into a tournament
I have always been a pretty good tournament player, well, by always I mean for the 2 years I’ve played poker. I learned the basics of preflop hand selection pretty quickly and I understood pot odds shortly after that. I had all the tools to be a good tournament player 6 months after my first game of poker. But I still had trouble getting deep into tournaments. I think the problem was my inability to shift gears. I either played super tight, super loose, or somewhere in between for the entire tournament.
In my opinion, the best tournament players switch gears a lot. It’s not randomly picking hands. They don’t declare that they’ll raise with certain hands to mix up play (that’s a ridiculous way to mix up play anyway). They pay attention to which opponents are weak, which opponents are strong, and what position they’re in.
Here are two examples:
1, I am in late position and I have two opponents who have been playing weak poker all night limping in front of me. I get dealt J&spades10&spades. What do I do? RAISE RAISE RAISE! My opponents are weak, so while I wouldn’t mind taking down the pot preflop I don’t mind if they call because with the right flop I can outplay them and with a perfect flop I’ll take all of their chips. I can raise with a hand like J&spades10&spades because while it’s not terrible, it’s not great. My opponents might have limped with A8o or KQ. I’m not in bad shape against most of the hands they’d limp with, especially since I know they’re weak players.
2. I am in middle position and I get dealt A♥J♦. A strong player is in the big blind, and there are 3 or 4 decent players still left to act. A decent player in front of me made a small raise. What do I do? Fold. You could raise here, but chances are your AJ won’t be good. You don’t know what the good players behind you are doing because they have not given you any information. The big blind might pick up a hand or might try to defend his blind since he’s good. There are too many people that could potentially play this hand and while A♥J♦ looks pretty, it’s really not that great. Fold it, wait for a better spot to enter a multi-way pot.
My point is that you tighten up in pots where your opponents are likely to have big hands and loosen up when you think a good flop will make you lots of chips. Obviously you’ll need to play a lot of poker to have a good feel for who is strong, what situations are going to win you lots of chips, and pay attention to the host of other variables, but the point is that to get deep into a multi table tournament you need to change gears and pay very close attention to your opponents.
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