Ed Hill Poker - Poker Articles

Tournament Play 2

Hello Class,

Last month I gave you all some pointers for the early stages of tournament play. As the tournament progresses, the nature of the game shifts and you must adjust your play accordingly, so this month I will continue with tactics for the critical stages of a tournament.

The Middle Stages

The blinds are constantly increasing and therefore, will start to represent an increasing proportion of your stack. For this reason simply winning the blinds becomes important. If you are first into the pot you should consider entering with a raise, quite often you can steal the blinds as your opponents will be risking a large proportion of their stack by calling your raise.

The flip side of this is that you must tighten up your requirements for calling, and when you do bet into a pot you have to play aggressively. Unless you are winning pots with some regularity you will quickly find your stack shrinking, so try to win the blinds once per round. This way you can see another round of hands and increase your chance of hitting that premium hand.

Also at this stage of the tournament your stack size starts to become important. If your stack falls below roughly 4 times the upper limit, you can expect to be called a lot more often. This is because your stack is not large enough to seriously damage the larger stacks at the table, and they know that you are being forced into playing slightly more marginal hands. Combat this by raising only with premium hands and limping in with reasonable hands. You should also lower your calling requirements when you are short stacked as you never know if a better opportunity will come along.

If you have twice the average stack size or more you are in a strong position. However, this can change rapidly as the blinds quickly add up, so don’t let your guard down. You need to keep playing aggressively, especially with the short stacks, but be careful of the other large stacks at the table as they can do you serious damage.

If you find yourself head to head with a player who is almost all-in you should force the other player to commit their last few chips at the first opportunity. If you would call a bet if they made one, you must bet in order to prevent them checking - knocking that player out will bring you one step closer to the money. However, as always, play with care as no matter how few chips a player has left they can quickly regain a commanding position in just a few hands if they hit a few fortunate draws.

OK class, that’s a wrap for this month's session. In Lesson 13 I will be continuing the strategies you need to succeed through to the late stages of our tournaments. Remember that poker is a learning experience, so if you make a mistake make sure you learn from it.

Good Luck and have fun!

Mike Herea

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