Poker

I need some tips for Texas Holdem Tournaments?

Basically just give me some basic strategy and intermediate AND a good link or two.
I never wanted to play tournaments because on tv there are so many allins , but i thought to myself “why does everyone else like it”? So here i am giving it a shot!
great stategy tips!! @pokemon/michele

well, here’s some of the very basic concepts of tournaments, and since i know your questions pertain to cash game play, how they differ from cash games:

in tournaments, obviously you only have one stack, as opposed to cash games where you can rebuy…as a result, your main focus should not necessarily be to make as much money as possible, which is the focus in cash games, but to attempt to gain maximum value while at the same time protecting your chip stack, since if you get busted that’s it for you…so as a rule you should attempt to survive while accumulating, which often means trying to force people with drawing hands out, as you don’t want your whole stack to possibly be put in jeopardy

in tournaments, being able to play the bubble is very important…you need to recognize who is trying to squeak into the money by folding every hand, and also those people who will play like you should, which is to take advantage of the “squeezers” at this point and rob them blind…once the bubble bursts, go immediately back to playing tight as you will have established a good table image

in online tournaments, which is what i assume you will be playing, the blinds get very high pretty quickly, and you will need to know how big your stack is compared to the blinds, as well as that of everyone else around the table…keep extremely close tabs on how many chips your opponents at the table have, it’s really important especially later in the tourney…if you have 10x the BB or less, then you will want to start to push all-in before the flop to maximize the pressure on your opponents, since the blinds and antes are very significant additions when your stack is that short…also, recognize when someone is short on chips and pushing all-in pre-flop, they might have a wider range than usual as they are probably desperate…as a final note, when a really, really short stack pushes all-in, be able to recognize pot odds pre-flop, which is something that is very, very rarely considered in cash games, since you may be mathematically correct to call with any two cards in some spots, and you will want to take a shot to eliminate your opponent at that point

there are a number of strategies out there for tournament play, since i don’t use what one would consider a basic or intermediate strategy i will just say that since i am assuming you are playing fairly small buy-in tournaments, you should just play TAG especially early, as that is how you can guarantee yourself money(in small buy-in tourneys)