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TIGHT FITS
After wasting many buy-ins in tournaments by playing too loose I have recently made an effort to tighten up. However, this sometimes seems to weaken me in the long run as my stack falls to the rising blinds and I am often left hamstrung in the latter stages of play. Can you suggest some strategies for keeping my head above water as the blinds go up without having to rely on picking up a run of good cards?
Matt Wilde, email
You of course have to loosen up your game a little when you have reached that far and utilize the chances you feel you get when they fold to you on the cut-off or button. If you have been at the same table for a long time and have a tight image, then it will be profitable to re-raise the raiser from late position, no matter what cards you hold. The most important thing in tournament poker is to know what gear to play and when to change this gear!
LIMPING HOME
In the last home game I played, I was in the small blind and the play folded round to me. I had a very mediocre hand – Q-4 suited – but I limped. The big blind proceeded to raise and I folded instantly. After the hand, my friend said that in his opinion there were very few incidents where it was the correct move to limp from the small blind, but surely providing I can get to the flop without being raised, seeing a cheap flop from the small blind can only be a good thing? What am I missing?
John Upton, Brighton
There is really no point in limping in with medium hands like that. If the big blind is a really bad player then of course you want to see a flop, but most of the time it’s bad to limp in there out of position. In tournaments position is VERY important so you want to play as many hands as you can in position and stay away from marginal hands out of position.
TABLE MANNERS
As a professional poker player, who’s more annoying to come up against - a terrible winner like Tony G who’ll use anything he can to put you on tilt, or a brat like Phil Hellmuth who’ll start berating your play as soon as you beat him in a hand? And how can I adapt my game when coming up against similar players in amateur games?
Jason Harwood, Doncaster
I don’t care who I play against and the best thing you can do to avoid tilt in a live situation is to have an i-Pod with you! If I could choose I’d rather play on a table with Tony because he’s usually quiet as long as there are no cameras around, but then again, most people are!
GOING LIVE
I play a lot of online cash games, but recently I have been contemplating trying my hand at more live tournaments. I have been told it requires a totally different mindset, but how much adapting am I actually going to have to do? What are the most important things to bear in mind when making the change from cash games to tournaments?
Keith Smith, email
The main difference is that while you will always push marginal values in a cash game to maximize your long-term profit, survival is the main key in tournaments so you need to avoid marginal situations and protect your chips since you can not re-buy. This also makes your stack size a lot more important than in cash games as you can apply a lot of pressure on stacks shorter than yours since you can knock them out whilst only risking a portion of your own. |
