When it comes to poker strategy, for an advanced player, there’s really not a whole lot think about. The game has a flow to it, and because of the experience he’s managed to accumulate, a good player will just let that flow carry him. Other than that, all he needs to do is win a few coin-flips and he’s as good as in the money. I do realize though that this “flow” is not that easy to pick up on for beginners, so I’ll try to dig up a few actual theories about tournament strategy.
Before you even make your first deposit in an online poker room to play in tournaments: sign up for a rakeback or a poker prop deal. This isn’t actual strategy, it’s just common sense. While rakeback deals work best in cash games, they do give you a rebate on tournament fees too, and signing up takes a few minutes, so it’s a no-brainer.
OK, you register for a MTT and you’re seated. The action begins. Poker tournaments feature gradually escalating blinds. What this means is that the blinds are extremely small compared to the size of your stack during the early stages. What that means to you is that you need to play extremely tight, for several reasons. First of all, if you read Sklansky (many new wave players consider his teachings obsolete, but as long as they’re rooted in actual facts they can’t possibly be that), you know that small blinds (blinds sizes are always relative, they’re always compared to the size of your stack, so when I say small, I mean small compared to your stack-size), call for tight play, because players just don’t get the right pot odds to loosen up. Play needs to loosen up according to Sklansky, as the blinds increase, and you may even reach a point at which shoving all-in on any two cards will make perfect mathematical sense. In tournaments, you basically go through all this: as the blinds increase, you need to loosen up. That’s the general direction in which you’re headed. Of course, your stack size may not increase at the rate you’d like it to. There will be fluctuations and that’ll complicate the overall equation.
In order to learn how to deal with these stack-size fluctuations, you should take a peek at the Harrington system. Devised by poker professional Dan Harrington, the Harrington system tells you what the optimal approach is, depending on the size of your stack compared to the size of the BB+SB (a variable called M by Harrington).
According to the Harrington system, if you have more then 20 Ms in your stack, you can afford to play optimal poker. Because this will pretty much be the case during the early stages, playing good old basic tight aggressive poker is the way to go. Provided you can keep your stack-size above 20Ms, you shouldn’t change that approach all through the game.
According to Harrington, when you have between 10 and 20 Ms on your stack, your options already begin to narrow down.
With 6-10Ms in your stack, you can no longer afford to play optimal poker. You need to come up with a solution to get your stack back up above 20Ms, and you need to force that solution. Steal blinds, put pressure on your opponents, and loosen up.
With 1-5Ms in your stack, you’re slowly but surely losing your grip on the game. Being this short-stacked will force you to make some pretty desperate moves. Intimidation is no longer a part of your arsenal though as given your stack-size, you won’t be able to intimidate anyone.
When your stack is smaller than one M, all you can do is to pick a good spot, to shove all-in and to pray. Make sure you’re the one doing the shoving instead of the calling (to exploit the fold equity) and make certain you only go up against one opponent if possible.
Author Resource:-
Steve Larson, an online poker player from Canada, visit his site from some great poker prop deals.
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