I’d advise you to all but completely ignore opening charts when it comes to late position, and instead focus on your opponents.Īgainst some blinds it’s correct to open any two on the button, against others you want to be tight and only open hands that are somewhat playable. It’s when there are only few opponents left to pass when you generally really want to widen your opening range, and in these spots it’s essential to have a good idea of how the math works and what types of hands you’re expecting your opponents to call with. In early and middle position most hands are easy decisions between opening and folding – every halfway competent players will open A-Q in every position and fold 7-5o without hesitating. (And once again, all of this isn’t even accounting for the pots you’ll win post-flop.)Īgainst weaker opposition, raising small and often still really works, especially in late position. Heck, raising with two napkins you picked up on the floor would show an immediate profit. If the big blind is tight enough to be folding hands like Q-5s or K-7o to your opens, raising 7-2o would show an immediate profit. It varies wildly from table to table, but you can generally expect the small blind to play back with around 10-15% of hands (usually by 3-betting), which leaves the remaining 40% on the BB’s shoulders. Unless the blinds are aggressive, there’s a reasonable chance they aren’t collectively playing back with 52.2% of hands. That means Gary’s open only has to work 47.8% of the time to make an immediate profit. There is 2,400 in the pot from blinds and antes and Gary is risking 2,200 to take it down. (And that’s not including the hand’s post-flop potential.) For example:ĩ-Handed Tournament Table, Blinds 500/1,000/100 With antes in play, a 2.25BB open has to pick up the pot less than half of the time to show an immediate profit.

This phrase drove the pre-flop strategy of almost every tournament regular for years, and it still has some merit.

Poker Tournament Tip 1: Steal a Lot, But Don’t Go Overboard So, I decided to try to tackle this subject by myself and create the ultimate list of 7 poker tournament strategy tips for players of all skill levels. When I searched “poker tournament tips” for myself, none of the results were particularly fruitful, with most info being wrong or outdated. I assume the searchers are looking for a quick checklist to go over before playing a tournament, and not advice on how much to tip the dealers after a big win. Poker tournament tips is, apparently, a pretty common search term on Google.

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