Tournament Play

Playing in a tournament can be one of the most exciting pastimes you’re likely to find especially if you’re sitting at a particularly lively table. In ring games people tend to be far more conservative in their behavior and in the plays they make. In a large tournament the more people begin to drop out the more exciting the poker becomes.

Many  Poker Room has seen a dramatic increase in the popularity of tournaments in general and Freeze-out tournaments in particular. This is not surprising since the Freeze-out format allows players to budget their poker perfectly. Once the buy-in and tournament fee are paid that’s it no extra costs and no surprises.

At the start of a tournament you’re going to want to keep to your normal game-plan and play fairly tight. Go for the cards you’re confident have a good chance of taking the pot and fold everything else. If you play your cards right you’ll find the field slowly falling away from you and the competition becoming that much more intense.

The smaller the field becomes the more flexible you’ll need to become with your choice of playable hands, the players you’re up against at this stage are likely to be fairly good and well versed in mixing it up so be sure you’re ready to do the same. Your ability to bluff will become increasingly important as will you ability to spot an attempted bluff. Personalities will begin to show as players get closer to winning a place at the final table, so be ready. The quiet person from the first table may start to become more vocal and more aggressive. So long as it doesn’t go overboard and become offensive you could make a comment or two that may put your opponent off his game a bit. You’re looking for any advantage you can get here, so pull out your book of Groucho Marx quotes and have some fun. If you’re not sure you’re ready for such banter perhaps you should ignore the wannabe comedian chatting away at you and take the pot from him while he’s thinking up his next witty comment.

Make sure every play you make is the best one you could make in order to win the pot, but you’ll find that aggressive plays and taking risks will have the biggest rewards. Let’s face it, when you sit down to watch the top players on a television poker special you’re often wondering how they can get away with some of the plays they make. The fact that they spend 10 minutes glossing over all the preliminary rounds and hours focusing on the final tables is because that’s where the action and the excitement is. Seeing the big guns bluff their way to a pot win on a nothing hand is why you’re glued to the set watching them.

Learning to play poker from a television broadcast of the final table in the WSOP is probably not going to give you the best strategy for playing your average ring game. Incorporating aspects of what you’ve seen when you play at the final table of the next $100,000 guarantee is another matter entirely though.