Tournament Tips

• 1. Never invest a significant amount of your bankroll in any given tournament. Tournaments involve a lot of luck and are generally feast or famine.
• 2. Pay attention to the changing game stacks and adjust accordingly. If the blinds are about to be increased to the point where you will be all in soon, take a risk and go head strong with a borderline hand before you will forced in with the blinds. In general, you want to increase your stack slowly throughout the tournament.
• 3. Learn which hands do well in heads up situations. A hand like Ax offsuit is a poor hand to play, but is a decent hand to go all in with pre-flop, as it has an advantage over most other hands. Pocket pairs do well, but suited cards go down in value.
• 4. Pay close attention to how your opponents act when they are in the blinds. Some will be very tight, so steal their blinds. Others will zealously defend their blinds so smack them when you have a strong hand.
• 5. The �Gap� concept is critical in tournaments. Simply put, you should be more eager to enter a pot with a raise than you would in a ring game because stealing the blinds is very valuable in a tournament. On the other hand, if someone has entered the pot already with a raise, you should be prepared to fold. You want to avoid confrontations in tournaments (unless you have the nut hand) and instead just easily win small pots to build up your stack.

• 1. Play for third or first. If you are low on chips at the end, try to �stay in� by going headstrong with a very strong hand like a high pocket pair or AK/AQ. If you are the chip leader, play aggressive and steal people�s blinds so you can maintain your lead and win the whole thing.
• 2. If it is early in the tournament, call small bets and raises with pocket pairs so you can bust someone at the flop if you hit.
• 3. Remember that suited connectors go down in value because people tend to be short stacked even at the beginning of the tournament. Even if you suited connector hits, there is a low chance you will be able to extract a lot of money out of your opponent in relation to the pot. These hands are only worth a call at the beginning of the tournament.
• 4. Keep good notes of the players you play against, as you will frequently meet the same people if you consistently play single table tournaments at the same buyin.

• 1. Relax and be prepared to play the whole tournament. Multi-table tournaments can take awhile, sometimes even six hours. If you do not wish to play this long, chances are you will unconsciously play bad so you might go out sooner.
• 2. Remember the relative value of your chips. Your first thousand chips are worth more than chips 10k-11k. Because of this, you need to be more cautious when you are one of the smaller stacks but more aggressive if you are a larger stack.
• 3. Don�t bluff much at the beginning. When you open with 1k chips, winning another 200-300 is not that important, survival is more important. Try to value bet and win a few huge pots when you have a really good hand.
• 4. Later in the tournament, don�t be afraid to stick all of your chips in pre-flop, especially if you are shortstacked. If you will be all in on the flop no matter what, might as well increase your chance of just stealing the blinds by sticking it all in pre-flop.