3 Texas Hold’em Strategies

When it comes to online poker tournaments, everything goes. That why you need to be extremely aware of your opponent’s tendencies which can be hard or easy to find depending on your own style of play. You’ll find here 3 Texas Hold’em strategies that you can apply in low to medium stakes. These are only 3 simple strategies among many but will provide you with helpful insight at various tournament stages.

Build Your Stack With The Right Risks

Unless you’re playing a turbo type tournament, odds are you start with a decent stack of chips and blinds are low. Although it’s true many gurus suggest to have a tight-aggressive approach the early stages of a tournament is the only time where you will have more than enough chips to take a shot at those risky draws without having to be pot-committed. Obviously a better starting hand is always appreciated, but in a tournament you don’t always have the luxury of having a power hand or a monster so you got to make do with what you have.

So if you have suited connectors and happen to either make your hand or make the draw on the flop don’t hesitate to take a few stabs at the pot with decent raises. Don’t go and raise 3x the blind when you’re on the first level if you believe someone might call or re-raise you. If you can fold your opponent, great, if you can’t, let’s hope you make that draw on the next card or else the river might put you in a tough position to play. If your opponent is going to call, you might as well make sure he’s going to call a big bet so you can get a bigger pot for your stack.

Whatever you do in the early stages of a tournament, you always want to put your opponent in a position that is so tough that they will decide to fold before the showdown. In later stages showdowns will be more and more common and leaving it to the showdown means you need to always have the best of it which brings us to the next strategy.

Playing Hands You Are Willing To Commit

This is mostly true for tournament games and especially in medium to later stages of the tournament. Why? As the blinds go up, your stack will shrink. You’ll quickly realize that the longer you play, the smaller your stack is compared the blinds. A tournament works by elimination and if you’re too short on chips you will get eliminated unless you can conjure up an amazing comeback.

When you reach that stage, you’ll want to play only hands that you are willing to commit because in many cases you simply won’t have enough blinds to play through the whole hand. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’ve been playing roughly 2 hours and the blinds have now reached around 100/200 and your stack is at 2500. Assuming you are below average at this point you have around 12 big blinds.

If you decide to raise 3X blinds preflop that leaves you with 9. So if theoretically you decide to raise 3X blind on the flop, turn and river, you have just enough blinds for one hand. However, If you were willing to go all-in for that hand why would you want to let your opponent see 5 cards before you put all your chips in? That is a common mistake many new players will make. If you don’t have many chips or if you are in a good position to make an all or nothing move don’t give your opponent the opportunity to see cards for cheap. If he or she wants to see cards, then make them pay the whole price upfront.

That’s why it’s important to play only hands that you’re willing to sacrifice your stack for. Sometimes it may not be the best hand, sometimes it may simply be position that forces you to play a marginal hand. However consider this when you push your hand, would your opponent take the risk of calling your raise with also a marginal hand if they don’t have to? Probably not because they also want to finish first and probably will take a better risk than any pair.

Capitalize On Every Street

Probably the simplest of strategies, but betting aggressively on every street is definitely a sign of strength. This means YOU need to take control of the pot by betting first. You might not always win but at least you’ll know when you’re beaten. Raising is the easiest way for you to gain information on your opponent. Of course it’s always better to be in a good position but even without the position raising will still give you an insight on where you stand compared to your opponent.

If you raise with a decent hand and your opponent re-raises you, you’ll be able to determine if you are really beat based on the amount of the bet. However if you were raised first, re-raising a decent hand would be risky and calling would show to your opponent that you’re probably weak or drawing for a card. Although calling has its advantages, raising is definitely a game breaker in the game of Texas Hold’em because it is the only way for you to bluff your way out of trouble.

So whenever you play tournament poker remember that there are many different type of players but the approach to these players is not necessarily different. The goal is the same for everyone, finish first. But the methods to reach there are not the same. Some may opt to try and survive while other will look to take advantage of opportunities. The best is to have some balance in both. A tournament is a game of patience and only by eliminating your opponents one by one will you reach the final table.

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