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THE BEGINNING STAGES OF A POKER TOURNAMENT
The beginning stages of a tournament (Blind levels 1 - 5)
Much as the following was briefly addressed in the text before, but this is where 90% of the amateur poker players lose their tournament due to unneccessary errorenous play, so we will repeat some of the concepts or dig deeper into the matter to clarify things.
Again and again, the first thing you want to keep in mind when taking on a multi-table Tourney is that your primary job is not to gamble away your tournament life (aka chip stack)!
Winning is not the most significant mentality the way it is with a cash game.
During the beginning stages of a multi-table tournament this is decisive: Whenever you lose you are not able to reach in your pocket and get a re-buy — you lose your chips and your entry-money and head for the rail. What you wish to do is stay out of tough or minimally advantageous situations and only go into situations where you know you are able to take hold of the chips, or where you are a heavy favorite.
Moving into the money is your number one priority.
The first table you are at, make certain to judge your opponents.
An excessively conservative table may allow you be more pushing: but keep in mind that since the blinds grow it is less useful to steal blinds early than late. Don’t be unnerved to wait if you are at an aggressive table.
As a matter of fact, if you are at an overly high-pressure table, it is a great idea to just take it easy and wait for that dominate hand, or wait for the weaker players to knock each other out. Surviving until the middle is the most single most crucial aspect of becoming a dominant multi-table player.
You can’t master the tournament if you are playing from a short stack for dear life because a couple of early decisions nearly busted you.
There are two pieces of advice most multi-table professionals will give and live by that apply in some manner to just about all multi-table tourneys.
In the beginning stages, you should be very aware of not playing hands with a negative expected value (EV), or even enter a coin toss spot like pushing with AK.
In cash games, you will be able to make a lot of profit pushing the EV of a hand where You are a 54% favorite, and they are a 46% (giving you and EV of 4), but in tournaments all that does is bust you.
This is why numerous utterly dominant table players detest multi-table tournaments, because they get knocked out quick, or get way in the lead, only to blow it because they do not change up their style quick enough.
Once you gauge your adversaries and adapt your style, you still need to remember that in a multi-table tournament you simply can not bluff out as often as you would like to.
Part of this is because of the chip value situation. The chips you drop off are more of value than the ones you acquire, and the more often you bluff, the less productive it is.
Besides that, what many poker players forget is that it takes quite a bit of clock time for the blinds to get high enough to do a large amount of harm to your stack, so why gamble so many of your chips for such a modest blind steal or low early pot?
These techniques are much more efficient later in the game, anyway, when they are worth more chips.
Losing half your chips early knocks you half way out of a tournament, but doubling up doesn’t get you anywhere near the money.
You are here: The Beginning Stages Of A Poker Tournament
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