Poker Tips and Strategies

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Playing no limit tournament poker in brick and mortar casinos can be fun. Often times we see starting chip stacks to blind ratios at about 100 or 200-1 in the beginning of tournaments.

Many of these tournaments give you a starting stack of 5,000 chips and start the rounds at 25-50. You have about 100 big blinds to play with. You break even for 1 round and suddenly at the 50-100 blind level you now have 50 big blinds.

Tournaments with buy ins less than 0.00 will see the structure change dramatically as you get deeper into such tournaments.

Let’s say you quadruple up during the next four rounds as you play deep stack poker and are feeling pretty good with 20,000 worth of chips.

Problem is by level 7 the blind structure now sits at 500-1000 leaving you with 20 Big Blinds. 

The rule of thumb is 10 blinds or below you push all in with your chips with a good starting hand.

With 20 big blinds left here you better be careful.

A good strategy used by successful poker players is to play tight aggressively in these middle rounds of tournaments with over 10 big blinds left.

You will find big stacks at the table are willing to gamble as they have built their stack up by taking down big hands or lucking out with high risks moves.

What I find here is that you wait for that 1 good hand and look to trap big stacks that will be looking to bully the table.

I like the early position limp with a premium hands because you may find a reraise from the big stack. Some may question why the limp but I feel is if you limp you will likely get action. There is nothing worse than getting no action with your premium hands at the middle or late in the tournament. Always raise or reraise in late position.

Of course if you don’t come across that 1 good hand and get at 10 blinds or below you will have to play the all in move with a good starting hand.

The best lesson here is to do the math and pay attention to upcoming blind levels. You may be sitting at 30 big blinds but by the next round that could get you chopped down to 10 big blinds.

It takes about 15 minutes this deep in a tournament to play 1 orbit, as the dealer has to count and push blinds, antes and big pots.

Count your chips and if you are down to 10 big blinds by the next level you better increase your playing hands and get aggressive with 15 minutes or less remaining in your 30 big blind level at this point of the tournament.

A helpful hint when playing tournaments is to get a structure sheet and do the math. A comfortable level of play is 30 big blinds. Multiply the big blinds x 30 at every level and write how many chips you need to achieve 30 big blinds at every level of play.

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Tags: how to play, Poker Tips, tournament