Poker tournament tactics for winners ebook

How to play. Download Now. Category Menu. To be a successful winner in the game of poker, you need to employ the right poker tactics to maximise your EV in as many spots as possible. We teach you how! September 24 To Check-Raise : Many players are easy to play against because they always choose to bet or raise their strong hands , and check or call with their draws or marginal made hands.

This strategy makes their hand ranges and betting lines easy to play against and super readable. By including some of your strongest hands into a checking range, from time to time, you help balance your checking.

Check-raising is undoubtedly a possibility too. An example of where to check might be on the river when you have a full house, bet the flop and turn, and a flush draw got there on the river. If you think your opponent will bet all his flushes, you can go for the check-raise with your boats.

This play will put his flushes in some tough spots, allowing you to win more money if he calls your check-raise. The general population pool is usually going to call more frequently and wider than they should, if they were playing optimally.

This strategy is opposite from cash game players who will usually have at least bb in their stack at any given point in time. All these questions come in play when trying to pick what poker books you should give your attention to. This book will provide you with all the fundamentals you need to start playing within a few hours.

It may not teach you too much about the strategy behind the game, but that comes later anyway. For your very first steps, this book is a great read. The advice contained therein is invaluable. The most important thing for poker beginners is to correctly structure the information they receive from various sources.

Along these lines, picking up the best poker books can be somewhat challenging in a sense that you want to find the one that will give you a good advice but that will not overwhelm you with too many complex concepts at the same time. For anyone looking to improve their ring game skills, these books will be a great resource. With detailed explanations of important concepts and real-life poker problems, these books will help you take your tournament game to a whole new level.

The final stages of a tournament are perhaps the most important part of the entire game, as this is when the money is made or lost. Harrington does a great job explaining how to up your aggression without spewing your chips unnecessarily. For intermediate and advanced players, poker books can help to add subtle moves and advanced techniques to your game that you may have overlooked.

You also might find that during a really bad poker run, re-reading your favorite poker books can help you return to fundamentals and point out some possible leaks in your game. Players who have been at it for a while often disregard the value of reconsidering some key concepts or simply lose sight of certain strategies they used to successfully use in the past but have since removed them from their arsenal for unknown reasons.

And it will still be there when you are ready. Slow playing is a mistake common among players who are afraid of chasing their opponents out of the pot. However, when you feel uncertain, just bet. Studying is essential to becoming the best poker player you can be, but at the same time, poker is a game that requires practice.

Many of the decisions you make at the poker table are automatic. This, of course, only gets worse as the decisions become important. But it's very important you set aside time to study. Reading poker articles , playing around with poker tools , and talking over hands with friends are a few of the many ways you can improve your game away from the table.

This is a mistake many new players make, but also some more experienced players. The situation usually plays out as follows. Their opponent checks to them on the river and they have a medium strength hand, so they bet On the river, you should be betting with a polarized range. That is to say, bet with a range that contains both value bets and bluffs, and check everything in between. All you have to do is check and showdown with these medium-strength hands and hope to drag the pot.

Poker expert and game theory wizard Matthew Janda says we should bluff the most on the flop, slightly less on the turn, and the least on the river.

Applications shows that in order to bet with a balanced range a range composed of the optimal number of value bets and bluffs on the river, we need to bluff less on each progressive street. This is because our bluffs will have more equity on earlier streets, as well as the opportunity to bluff again on a later street.

Think about it So, because we have more equity, we can bluff more often while still remaining balanced. This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of advanced tournament poker strategy. So, instead of playing defensively, you should be playing solid and aggressive poker early on in order to build up a stack for a deep run.

If you find yourself short-stacked and near the money bubble or a pay jump, then you can start using a more survival-oriented playing style. Poker is a complex game. You have to weigh many factors in order to choose the best path of action. Bet sizing aside, the choices themselves are not many: you only need to choose between checking, calling, betting, raising, or folding.

But figuring out which one of these actions wins the most is seldom obvious. This is why you should always avoid rushing when making a decision. An extra moment's thought could provide the crucial insight needed to make the right choice, and it'll help you keep emotions out of your decision making. Do this and you'll win more, and learn more while playing. That said, it's important to avoid all unnecessary tanking. You should never, for example, take 15 seconds to fold your 9s5c preflop from under the gun.

Not only will it piss off your fellow players, you will actually hurt your own win-rate by reducing the number of hands played per hour.

Building a network of poker playing friends will advance your understanding of the game. You'll bounce ideas off of each other, and gain new perspectives on every situation.

The problem with going it alone is that you're more prone to biases. With another 2 or 3 or 4 different poker minds around you, you can more easily find what's right about your thought processes and thus eliminate most of the bias.

Another benefit of having poker friends comes into play when those inevitable downswings occur. Your friends can provide an amazing source of support during the hard times, and since they are poker players themselves that support will be all the more helpful. Most players are too passive preflop. But in order to get paid with them preflop, you also need to add in an appropriate amount of bluffs.

With antes in play, a 2. For example:. There is 2, in the pot from blinds and antes and Gary is risking 2, to take it down. If the big blind is tight enough to be folding hands like Q-5s or K-7o to your opens, raising o would show an immediate profit. Heck, raising with two napkins you picked up on the floor would show an immediate profit. Against weaker opposition, raising small and often still really works, especially in late position.

In early and middle position most hands are easy decisions between opening and folding — every halfway competent players will open A-Q in every position and fold o without hesitating.

Learn tactics that work vs. Learn more now! The following line will be the most important thing you take away from this article unless you already know it :. We just learned that a small open raise only has to work around half of the time to profit.

As the big blind, the burden is mostly on us to stop people from raising too often. This works out to Even offsuit has more than that against a standard button range it has Does this mean we should call with every hand when our pot odds are this good?

No, definitely not. If there was no such thing as post-flop, yes we would defend every hand with raw equity higher than our given price. An estimate will do just fine. I wrote a long article about this topic see: The Ultimate Guide to Big Blind Defense , which I strongly recommend you read if you want to learn more about the proper big blind defense strategy in tournaments. Hands like suited are a no-brainer, but even the weakest suited hands usually profit as flats against late position opens.

But at least make sure to never fold a hand like suited or Q-T offsuit to a single open. I personally flat almost any two cards against weak opponents, and not even an open from Fedor Holz could get me to fold Q-7o or s.