Your Guide to Making Online Poker Profitable

Multi-Table Tournament Games

Later Stages (cont.)

Slowplaying is not usually a wise move in the later stages of a tournament, especially if you're a small stack (the exception of course is when you flop the nuts and want to build the size of the pot).  If you see a flop and you feel confident you're winning, but you don't have the nuts, you need to try to bet enough so that anyone on a draw will consider it too expensive to call.  If you start out with AA or KK, the best scenario is an all-in before the flop with one or two players, but no more than that.  So if someone raises in front of you when you have these hands, put them all-in.  You might occasionally just call the big blind with these hands if you early in the betting in order to entice someone to raise you, but generally, if you have a big hand, you want to raise pre-flop at least 3 times the big blind in order to push out the marginal hands and get it to one-on-one, or simply steal the blinds.  Raising pre-flop with a great hand is rarely a bad move, the worst that can happen is that you just steal the blinds.  However, imagine you have KK and you just call the big blind and you are up against someone with A6.  If an Ace falls you will most likely lose, but if you had raised he probably wouldn't have called you.

Another advantage of the pre-flop raise is it gives you information about the players who call or raise you.  You know you're going to be up against pocket pairs or two high cards, but rarely facing smaller suited connectors (except for maybe large stacks).  Therefore, when the flop hits, you will know where you stand.  For instance, if you raise pre-flop with AK and the flop is K73 rainbow (all different suits), you can be pretty confident you're winning, because no one would have called with K7, and if they had KK they would have gone all in pre-flop.  Another example: if you start with KK, and J84 rainbow comes on the flop, and your opponent bets, you can probably figure he has AJ (he wouldn't call with J8), and thus you have him beat and you can re-raise him all-in or a large amount.

One additional advantage of the pre-flop raise is the image of strength you portray with it.  One important aspect of poker that beginners don't realize is that what you actually have is only important once you reach the showdown; until then, what others THINK you have is what's important.  Example: suppose you raise pre-flop with AK and J84 rainbow comes on the flop.  If you are in late position, and everybody checks to you, you can be pretty sure no one has a Jack, or they would have bet (they wouldn't want to risk a higher card coming and then no longer be winning).  In this situation you should bet - this is called a "continuation bet."  The other players will think you either have AJ, or you have a higher pair, and will fold if they can't beat JJ with a good kicker.  Of course, if you get re-raised, you may want to consider folding, since it's possible they were slowplaying a great hand like a set of Jacks or 8's.  But most of the time this strategy will work and you will take down the pot at that point.

Basically, if you are a small or medium stack, you will want to play tight, smart poker and hang on to your chips as best you can.  You will get a great hand every once in a while in a tournament, and your goal should be to hang on and have as many chips on hand as possible when you do, so that you can win a big pot and move up on the leaderboard.  You will see guys with small stacks get into a panic mode and go all-in with marginal hands.  While this strategy may work every once in a while, most of the time it doesn't work.  The reason is that someone will call your all-in with a good hand, which means you will probably be in a coin flip situation, meaning that 50% of the time you'll win, and 50% of the time you'll be knocked out of the tournament.  Plus, you'll find that guys will call an all-in more often than they will a smaller bet that is 3 or 4 times the big blind - while this may not make sense at first, all-ins pre-flop appear desperate, and guys will want to take advantage of this desperation.  You don't want to resort to pre-flop all-ins unless your stack gets so small that you can only afford a few big blinds, or you have a monster hand like AA or KK.  Playing smart, selective poker is the best way to last and move up in a tournament.

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