Poker Strategy It

The best tournament poker strategy is to recognize the three stages of any poker tournament and to have a distinct tournament poker strategy for each of the vital crunch times during a poker tournament. There are two approaches you can use when playing the early stages of a poker tournament. The first is the conservative approach. Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Be Consistent. Poker is a long-term game. You need time to build your bankroll and find the right cash game or poker tournament strategy that works for you.

Poker Strategy Course

Good Texas Hold'em Strategy

Although it's possible to talk about Texas Hold'em strategy indefinitely, due to the game's subtle complexities, we've compiled three of the most salient pieces of poker advice every aspiring pro should know.

Pulling off fancy bluffs and check-raising the river with a small value bet may be enticing propositions. However, if you haven't mastered the basics, then you'll never have the ability to play like Phil Ivey and run these sorts of complex plays.

With this in mind, here are some good strategies online players with a burgeoning bankroll should commit to memory.

Cut Down the Amount of Hands You Play

One of the biggest mistakes novice players make when they first start playing Texas Hold'em is to get involved in too many hands.

Although the prospect of making a strong hand or bluffing our opponent is appealing, it's can actually be a major drain on your bankroll if you get involved in a lot of pots.

One important fact to remember is that if you play a lot of hands you will make a pair less than two-thirds of the time and this often means you'll have to fold a lot post-flop.

Secondly, if you do manage to make a hand it will be usually be weaker than average, which means you'll lose pots (and therefore money) at showdown more often.

Be More Aggressive

Coupled with a habit of playing more hands than is profitable, newbies will often adopt a passive strategy when they enter a pot.

Instead of raising or re-raising they will usually limp or call and allow another player to take control of the hand. This is potentially fatal because it means the passive player is more likely to be bullied into submission and, therefore, lose the pot.

There's an old adage in poker that you should try to remember if you want to avoid being passive and make more money: 'If a hand is not worth raising, then it's not worth playing.'

Be More Active

Although standard online Texas Hold'em strategy advocates that you take regular breaks, the reality is that most professional grinders never stray too far from their computers.

It may not be the right thing to do, but many online poker pros will put in 18-hour sessions without a second thought for their health, or, indeed, the health of their bankroll.

In the world of Texas Hold'em online, volume is king and if you aren't prepared to sit for hours on end at a computer then being a professional isn't for you.

Always Try and Play in Position

Position is king at the poker table and before you enter any pot you should consider where you are in relation to the button, the blinds and to any active players. Essentially this means you should play more hands the closer you are to the button because you'll have the benefit of extra information. Sometimes playing out of position is unavoidable, but if you want to have the greatest advantage over your opponents it's important to always play in position.

Get Ready With Your HUD

Hand reading is a basic tenet of good poker, but when you're an online pro you can often get away with substandard powers of deduction by using your HUD. A Heads Up Display unit can uncover a multitude of tendencies on your opponent and help your decision making process immensely.

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Please let me encourage you to reach out to me with article ideas and questions for future columns. You can tweet to me at @FossilMan, or send me a message at info@fossilmanpoker.com.
More from this series:

Part 1: Definitions
Part 2: Adjusting Your Attitude
Part 4: Strategy Considerations

In my last article, I spoke about how some players do not like re-entry and rebuy tournaments. The main concern seems to be the idea that these events permit players with deeper pockets to gain an advantage over those without. There is also a concern that some players pursue an extremely loose, aggressive strategy during the re-entry or rebuy period, and this makes the game harder to play for those who don’t plan on firing more than one bullet.

I took the time to explain why I disagree with these concerns. I will say, however, that there is a problem with many re-entry tournaments. The problem isn’t with the re-entry aspect, but with the late registration period.

Today, most tournaments have a late registration period, but that wasn’t always the case. It is actually amazing how long we played tournaments without the ability to register late.

I can remember living in San Diego County in the 1990s, leaving work on a Friday to crawl through the traffic up the I-805 and the I-5, spending hours to get to Oceanside for a tournament. If the tournament started at 7:00, and you got there at 7:01, too bad, so sad, you were shut out. For some reason, the concept of registering late just didn’t exist.

It was great when this changed and most tournaments started offering the ability to register late. At first, this was done primarily to address issues such as those I faced. The poker room was extending registration to accommodate a player whose arrival was delayed by traffic or the like. Usually, the late registration period was 30 minutes, maybe an hour. The main point was to let people get in despite running late.

Of course, the cardrooms didn’t take long to notice that late registration meant an increase in prize pools, and the rake, so the length of the late registration period was extended. First it was an hour, then two hours, and three hours, etc. Most multi-day tournaments now offer late registration through much of day 1, anywhere from halfway through day 1, and even up until the start of day 2. In a few cases, even later!

The primary reason for late registration today is no longer to help a player who is running late. It is to allow a player to enter, play a while, bust out, and re-enter again on the same day. Many of these tournaments offer large guarantees, and by permitting very late registration, it is much more likely they will meet the guarantee and not have to pay an overlay.

In itself, this is not a bad thing. As I discussed in my last article, I do not believe re-entry (or late registration) favors the deep pockets. And even if this does lead to some players pursuing a hyper-loose-aggressive strategy during the re-entry period, I’m fine with taking advantage of that as well.

The real problem is equity. Kenny Hallaert, the excellent Belgian poker player and tournament director, pointed this out very effectively in his paper, “The Impact of Late Registration on Stack Value According to the Independent Chip Model in Multi-Table Tournaments.”

In it he shows mathematical proof that permitting a player to register late enough is the same as giving that player money out of the prize pool. Obviously, they are not really being given money, but they are being given equity. His work shows how the late-registering player has gained equity as soon as they enter, even before playing a hand.

If a tournament starts each player with 30,000 in chips for a $1,000 buy-in (ignoring rake), and the last person to enter comes in when two-thirds of the field is gone, their stack is already worth more than $1,000.

This is true even though their average opponent has three times as many chips. Since so many have already been eliminated, they are that much closer to making the money. Close enough, in fact, that ICM math says their 30,000-stack is worth about $1,100. And there is only one place that extra $100 in equity can come from. It is taken from the equity of every other player still in the event. If a player enters even later, when three-fourths of the field is gone, their equity is about 15 percent higher than the buy-in they paid.

The prevailing idea was that poker pros have a bigger skill advantage when the blinds are low and there are more amateurs or satellite winners still in the tournament, but Hallaert’s math clearly shows the equity gained.

None of this has anything directly to do with re-entry, of course, but it is a problem that has become more apparent with later registration. If a player re-enters when the field is greatly reduced, this effect comes into play. But this effect is the same for a new player or a re-entering player. The answer to this problem is not to eliminate re-entry, but to limit the time during which re-entry or late registration is available.

Any experienced tournament director can estimate, based on a given structure, approximately what percentage of the field will be eliminated at any point in time. All they need to do is schedule the close of registration so that no more than about one-third of the field has been eliminated. Although Hallaert did not recommend this number specifically, extrapolating from his results, if a player registers with two-thirds or more of the field still in play, their ICM advantage from registering late should be no more than about two percent, which is much more acceptable than the 5-15 percent seen in the scenarios he did write about.

Yes, the player who enters late is coming in short-stacked. And I do not just mean compared to the other players, but to the blinds as well. This means they are in a high-variance situation. However, it is important to be aware that it is a profitable situation for them regardless.

If your tournament offers super-late registration, one option is to not play. That is, vote with your feet. If you choose this line, be sure to tell the room management why you didn’t play. If enough players agree with you, they will probably change this feature. Another option is to take advantage of the situation by choosing to enter late yourself, gaining this ICM advantage.