By Karac Karlin
Online poker tournaments are currently more popular than ever, sometimes with millionaire prizes. Winning a poker tournament is not easy, but with the right strategy, you can massively improve your odds. Check it out.
Online poker tournaments strategy
Here are some simple online poker tournaments tips to help you increase your chances of winning and you can implement them right away.
- Begin slowly.
Early in a tournament, even before antes kick in, play conservatively because the early stages of a tournament are more about surviving than generating value. You won’t be able to win the tournament early on, but you can lose all of your chips. Due to ICM, which influences the value of each chip as the tournament develops, doubling up your chip stack is not as beneficial early on. If, on the other hand, your opponents are all playing extremely tight, it makes sense to open up your game and steal their chips as a counter-strategy. Just keep in mind that this is a marathon, not a sprint.
- Patience is required.
The rate at which the blinds grow bigger should determine how aggressive you are in the early stages. It is more vital to focus on value than survival in a turbo tournament when the blinds climb quickly. One of the most common mistakes new players do is to build up a large chip stack and then waste it by trying to win the event too soon. If you want to succeed in large field events, patience and discipline are essential. The fun truly begins in the middle stages. The participants at your table will have different chip stacks, which will limit your approach in various ways.
For example, if you have a lot of short-stacked opponents left, you should narrow up your opening range because they are likely to three-bet a broad range in the hopes of doubling up. If you don’t fold many hands that you’d normally open from each position, you’ll be forced to fold too often when faced with a shove. When you have short-stacked opponents to your left, a speculative hand type like 9s 7s, which would have been a fine open earlier, is now a clear fold because you can’t call a shove. Because high-card hands, such as AJ, are better suited to calling a three-bet all-in from a short-stack, their value rises.
- Stay out of the “danger zone” as much as you can.
The “risk zone” kicks in during the middle phases. If you’re down to less than 20 big blinds in the middle stages, you’ll need to drastically alter your strategy. You can’t play speculative hands to see how the flop will turn out any longer. Instead, you should limit your range to stronger hands and go all-in to steal pots and increase your stack.
Best Online poker sites for tournaments
There are many options in online poker sites for you, with different tournament schedules and prize pool sizes. To find the best for you, check out DonkHunter. You will find detailed information about the different online poker rooms available in your area and the tournaments they hold.
