When playing a poker tournament, drawing out can be crucial in you getting back in the game. You don’t necessarily need to have a premium hand to attempt a blind steal but it helps to understand the psychology of tournament play so that you can properly decide when it’s a good idea to try.
Your own poker play is often counter-intuitive. It’s often hard to go for a blind steal with good cards when you are short stacked, because you don’t want to scare away the blinds. However, when you have a good hand, you can win the blinds uncontested, so it’s a psychological edge you can work with.
Consistency is pretty much the key to playing a hand through the tournament. You should be waiting for a good hand and poring over every card you could get your hands on. Check which of your opponents are raising and see if you could call, or even go one step further and reraise. Often times if you steal the blinds in a poker tournament you’ll find yourself reraised by multiple players.
This can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. For example, in a tournament where you are starting to get low money, you won’t want to attract too much attention to yourself and get targeted by the players.
If you raise and get reraised, it can be a sign that you are starting to attract too much attention and you might want to shift tactics and just become a very tight player and wait for a good hand to make your move.
On the other hand, if you’ve been successful in your small tournaments,aping up your bankroll with small wins and avoiding big losses, then raising significant blinds and taking down uncontested pots is a good way to steal the attention of other players in the tournament.
You Can’t Check
Go all-in when you are a favorite to win the hand but risk being check called.
- This move is fundamentally wrong and is strictly a bluff. Usually a player will overvalue their hand when they have it and will conveniently let you know that they have it when they try to make a move.
- You can’t guarantee that your opponent will fold, but a successful bluff will often entice them to fold on the promise of doubling their stack.
Do nothing else but concentrate completely on your own hand. Do not pay to many attention to what the other players are doing, just do your JJ and hope you can win.
Stealing Blinds In Egp88 Tournaments
The objective of most poker tournament is to remain in the tournament until you at least win some money. However, frequently the payout for finishing first or second is heavily dependent on the number of failed chips you have. If you are the chip leader when you are finished, you are not going to win any less money than somebody who finishes 2nd. In fact, in a heavily tournamentized environment, you are likely to win more money.
When you finish 3rd or 4th, the payout is closer to what it is worth to you to finish 5th or 6th. In these cases, you made the right move by finishing first or second in a tournament. Never worry about how you made the right move, you actually need to focus on the fact that you made the right move so you can adjust your strategy to counter your likely opponents’ strategy and/or theirs.
Final Table Competition
Competition at the final table can be something that you will not want to miss. Certain players will not want to wait their turn as the player to bet, raise or fold. You might think this is a chance to bluff everybody off the table, but you are wrong. If you try to bully someone out of the game, you are not going to succeed. Instead, you will likely find that you will be called by more players. This could be disastrous if you try to use your hand to go all-in because you are trying to bully the table again.
If you want to try to win a tournament, remember that you are going to be competing against some of the best players in the world. You might want to use this to your advantage and try to beat them at their own game. Do not fall into the trap of thinking your hand is too weak to really compete.
Trust the hand-eyeing and trying to figure out what the best cards are. If you can recognize that you have a good hand, then you probably do not need to worry about using it to go all-in and probably will not want to. If you can recognize you have a weak hand, then you are probably not going to win the game and probably will not want to play. You need to be able to recognize these things to have the best chance at winning.