Some Thoughts on No Limit Holdem Tournaments

No limit holdem has become the big game in poker. The WSOP world championship is a no limit holdem event. Let’s look at some ways to improve your strategy for these events.

As in any poker game, first get a feel for the table you’re at. If everyone is playing an aggressive style, you might want to pick your spots and just look to double up. If the table is more passive, take control and see what you can do.

When you start the tournament the blinds are small and the stacks are big. This is when you can play poker. Bluffs, slow playing, check raising, etc., are all useful plays. Your skills are fully tested in this stage. When the blinds get big, in relation to the stacks, play gets simpler. Many plays are decided pre flop.

When players have a lot of chips compared to the blinds, you can play weaker hands, looking for well disguised monsters. On the other hand, big poker pairs need to be handled with care. If you don’t hit the flop you might be behind. These hands can be hard to fold, and become costly.

When the blinds get big in relation to the stacks, especially your stack, the opposite becomes true. You play your big pairs, and top pair top kicker hands fast and hard. The small suited connectors and small pairs need to be folded to raises.

Too many tournament players just look at their hole cards to make decisions. Experienced players consider stack sizes, along with other factors, to make decisions. This gives them a more complete sense of what might happen.

When the blinds get bigger, it’s necessary to steal the blinds whenever you can to keep your stack from shrinking to nothing. Consider all the stack sizes here too when making steal moves. Let’s look at why.

You have 8,000 chips and are sitting on the button with the action folded to you. The tournament is nearing the bubble, where you start to make money. The blinds are 500/1000 with antes of 100. The small blind has a stack of 70,000 chips, and the big blind has 100,000.

You really need a very strong hand to go all in here. It isn’t dangerous for either player to call you, and you risk making nothing. It is their stack sizes compared to yours, that tells you this.

If the stack sizes for these players were 8,000 and 9,000 you can expect more folding. They don’t have enough chips to comfortably can gamble with you. Also, they aren’t so short stacked that they might decide just to go for it.

Well, these are some of the things that you need to pay attention to if you want to be a good tournament player. It’s a lot more than just the cards. Good luck at the tables.