Texas Holdem Tournament Strategy

The Texas Hold’em tournaments require a rather different strategy than the one used in cash games, especially if you are playing against online poker cheats. The main differences are that in tournaments, you have to pay once an entry fee, whereas, in the cash games, in each poker game you have to contribute with money for your bets. Another difference is that in the tournaments, the blinds will not stay the same, like in the cash games, but they will constantly rise, so you can’t simply wait forever for a good hand to play. That’s why you must also learn how to steal the blinds, which can help you survive during the tournaments.

In fact, the only goal within the PokerStars tournaments is survival: you must try to survive for as long as you can; if you survive long enough, you’re going to share the prizes and, if you’ll be the last player to survive, you’ll be the winner of the tournament.

Tournaments require you to focus over the game for long periods of time. You need to pay attention to the game all the time, as a momentary lapse might lead you to do mistakes you otherwise wouldn’t do and you will lose the game.

One good strategy is that you play very tight early in the game. You don’t bluff and you play just the good cards. Bluffing is expensive at this point of the game as the other players will call you relatively often and as such you will lose more money that you will win. Later in the game, as the blinds get higher, you will not get the chance of waiting for the good hands anymore, so you will have to use whatever hands you get and as such, you’ll be forced to bluff. A reputation of a tight player that you built early in the game might also be useful at this part.

You should choose how many hands you play by the number of games which you can play, taking in consideration the cost the blinds and your bankroll. If the number of games you can play without winning anything is more than 20, you can play very conservatively and wait for a good hand. If you are playing against absolute poker cheating pros, then you need to play less. If this number is getting lower toward 15, you should play more aggressively and try to steal as many blinds as you can. If it gets even lower, you should consider yourself into a PokerStar danger zone and try to play loose and if your number gets around 5 and you think you can really win the round, don’t hesitate to go all in.