Winning Tournament Strategy

Besides the growing popularity of playing poker online, tournaments are largely responsible for the 21st century boom in poker. Although High Stakes Poker on GSN currently broadcasts a cash poker game, it is the first of its kind. Prior to this, all televised poker featured poker tournaments, and it is tournaments like the World Series of Poker that have gotten many people interested in poker, and texas holdem games in particular.

People who play tournament poker do so to win money, and many theories have arisen about the best way to approach tournaments in order to maximize the chance of winning. Here are some basic winning tournament strategies to consider.

Play Tight Early

Early in a poker tournament, the blinds, and hence the pots, tend to be rather small compared to the average stack. Winning the blinds uncontested will not give you a significant edge. Therefore risking huge amounts of chips in order to take down these pots tends not to be +EV (positive expected value). Some hyper-aggressive poker players adopt a strategy of attempting to double and triple up as soon as possible and are willing to risk the likelihood of an early exit against the possibility of having a big stack to bully opponents with - this player type is common in almost every online pokerroom - but the tight early strategy, however, is the traditional approach.

Take Smaller Edges against Stronger Opponents

In a cash game, you should be willing to commit your chips with even a small edge because you can always rebuy if you end up on the wrong side of the odds. In a tournament, one bad card can end your tournament play. For this reason you should generally try to avoid committing your chips without a big edge. However if you are playing a very strong opponent and think you can get even slightly the better of a situation, you should be prepared to commit as many chips as necessary, since the more complex the situation is the more likely the stronger player is to outplay you.

Learn to Play with Different Size Stacks

Your stacks may vary widely during a poker tournament. When you have a big stack, you should be selectively aggressive and use it to threaten opponents with elimination, thereby winning pots uncontested. When you have a small stack, you need to move it in while you can still either get opponents to fold or have a playable stack if you get called and double up. Learning to play with different stacks is a major element in tournament strategy.