This is why aggressive play is the correct strategy in poker tournaments. When you then consider again that aggression is important in no limit poker, you can start to see why aggression is the focal point of your strategy in no limit poker tournaments. The Playing Chicken with a Chicken Strategy. We've covered some of the broader concepts affecting multi-table poker tournament strategy so far, including how tournaments differ from cash games, the importance of stack sizes in tournaments. Poker Tournament Tip 1: Steal a Lot, But Don’t Go Overboard “Open small and often.” This phrase drove the pre-flop strategy of almost every tournament regular for years, and it still has some merit. With antes in play, a 2.25BB open has to pick up the pot less than half of the time to show an immediate profit. The best tournament poker strategy is to recognize the three stages of any poker tournament and to have a distinct tournament poker strategy for each of the vital crunch times during a poker tournament. There are two approaches you can use when playing the early stages of a poker tournament. The first is the conservative approach.

Tips for Getting Past the Big Field Tournaments

Having played my fair share of Sunday Tournaments I know they can be very hard to finish highly in. The most popular of these: the Stars $1.5 million GTD and the UB $200k GTD contain thousands of entrants but but that makes the chances of a payoff are quite slim. With over 7,000 entrants on average in the Stars Sunday Million, I happily recommend alternatives such as Bodog’s $100k GTD or UB’s weekly $200k GTD. If you’re still dead keen on the big tournaments then here are some tips for you.

Stay Tight Early & Let the Agro-Maniacs Bust Out

Big tournaments have massive rewards, hence you’ll find a lot of regs shoving their stacks in early and trying to double up and get top of the tournament chip leaderboard. The fields will thin fastest because in the first few rounds. To stop yourself getting busted out by over limpers and players shoving light, I suggest playing extra tight in the first half dozen hands and quite literally fold all of your non-premo hands from EP. I’d be looing at a VPIP% of 10% or even less depending on the table. Unless you literally have AA or KK, I don’t recommend entering pots from EP or SB because there are just too many players left to re-raise the pot. Normally I’ll happily set-mine with low pockets regardless of my position at the table but even these become suspect when you’re facing 3bets pre-flop.

Focus on the Game, Not the Payoffs and Remaining Players

My biggest distraction as a tournament player is checking who bust out when and how many players are remaining every 5 minutes. It’s important to know what level of the tournament you’re in and how close you are to the bubble, of cours this affects your strategy and looseness of play But you shouldn’t be distracted when you could be picking up valuable tells and action from players who you might encounter later on. Playing in the big guaranteed tournaments can also be quite unsettling for new players or those who qualified through satellites, and my tip is just to focus on your game and don’t think too much about the money.

Turning Off When You Switch Tables

Your knowledge and ability to categorise players is one of the rare skills that great tournament players possess. In the later stages of a tournament your ability to read someone’s 3bet or re-steal range from UTG is the type of information that will win you the tournament. So everytime you switch tables don’t turn off. Uppdate yourself on the new players because there is alot of changing information you need to process, including the average M-zone and VPIP% of the table. It can be difficult and stressful, but again this is what will get you to the final table and give you an edge on your opponents.

Use Your Tournament Breaks Wisely

Tournaments at major poker sites have synchronised breaks – usually 5 minutes every hour. The best way to take advantage of these is to go to the toilet, drink/eat, do some exercise and generally anything that will wake yourself up and improve concentration for the next hurdle. If you’re playing for another 4 hours you’ll probably regret wasting your time checking your emails.

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Small stakes online poker tournaments are fantastic fun. They can be frustrating at times — I'll give you that — but for the most part, it is difficult not to enjoy yourself while competing in one.

They are also potentially lucrative beasts, not least because they tend to attract players in droves.

On some sites — in particular GGPoker and partypoker — tournaments with buy-ins as small as $1-$10 may see several thousand hopefuls take to the virtual felt in the hope of turning their tiny investments into much more meaningful sums.

As you can imagine, the majority of these huge fields are populated with recreational players and therefore the standard of play is, as a rule, very poor.

That's not to say navigating your way through the crowds and winning one of these things is an easy task, because it isn't.

In other words, don't think you're going to deposit $200 online, play a bunch of these online poker tournaments, and suddenly be rolling in cash like Scrooge McDuck in Ducktails.

It's not going to happen.

What is going to happen, or what should happen, is that you continue reading this article — and others you find in the Strategy section — and once you've armed yourself with the weapons of knowledge, you go out there and apply that learning to do more than just enjoy these tournaments, but to profit from them as well.

Here are five tips designed to help you both prepare for and find success in small stakes online tourneys.

1. Be Prepared for a Long Session

Most of these low buy-in, big field tournaments take several hours to complete, so you need to be prepared to play for a long time.

Be patient as always, but also be ready for a lengthy grind should you go deep in the event.

I've been fortunate enough to chop the $3.30 rebuy on PokerStars twice. On both occasions, the tournament started at around 7:00 p.m and we finished at 6:30 a.m.

This is all well and good if you are a poker pro who can sleep the next day, but you have to take into consideration work commitments if you have a job.

Know what you're potentially getting yourself into when registering for these events.

Best Online Poker Tournament Strategy

This tip to beat online poke tournaments does not apply only to low-stake events. As you can see on our Sunday Million strategy guide, also pros like Arlie Shaban and Felix Schneiders advise all players to master the art of being patient.

That said, not every tournament is a 12-hour commitment. All poker sites have a calendar that features also much quicker online tournaments where you can have fun and win meaningful sums.

These are the top sites to play online poker tournaments in 2020:

2. Be Prepared For Some Crazy Swings

The variance in small stakes poker tournaments is huge because of the sheer number of opponents you have to get through and the fact many of these opponents can be nearly impossible to put on a hand.

Also of significance when playing against a large field full of recreational players is the possibility of players calling your raises — even your all-in ones — with some ridiculous holdings, adding further to the unpredictability of outcomes.

While this situation is very favorable in the long run, over the short term you can often find yourself running worse than you ever thought possible.

Make sure therefore you have an ample bankroll to fall back on when times are hard — something in the range of 200-300 times of your average buy-in (I'd recommend).

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3. Keep it Simple and Value Bet Your Hands to the Max

DO NOT try to run an elaborate bluff at any stage of the tournament because it will only lead to tears of sorrow.

A lot of your opponents only care what cards they have in their hand and won't realize from your actions that you're representing a specific hand — they just want to get to showdown and hopefully win.

More often than not in these events you will want to keep matters simple, playing 'ABC poker' and letting the cards fall how they will.

Along the same lines, make sure you get the maximum value from your made hands.

Higher-stakes tournament grinders may routinely fire 1/3 pot-sized bets at their opponents, but that's because it is more difficult to get paid off at those stakes.

At the lower end of the spectrum, you can get away with betting more. Because so many of your opponents will love to call your bets, you may as well take advantage with your strong holdings.

4. Listen to the Betting / Prepare to Lay Down Some Big Hands

How often have you heard poker players bemoan their luck and come out with some rubbish such as 'I can't beat these donkeys, they always hit the nuts on the river.'

What they don't tell you is that 'these donkeys' often play their hands in a manner that allows you to get away from pots should you need to.

For example, if a weak player has limp-called preflop, called the flop, called on the turn, and then leads into you on the river when the flush comes in, guess what?

That player almost certainly has the flush.

The same is often true for raises on the river. Even if the only hand that beats you is , if an obviously weak player raises you on the river, you have to consider that he or she probably has !

5. Don't Worry About Playing a 'Balanced Style'

If someone tells you that you have to play a 'balanced style' of poker in large-field small stakes poker tournaments, laugh and walk away.

While you have to do this higher up the poker food chain, you are highly unlikely to come up against the same players ever again in a field of 3,000-10,000 foes, so you can be as unbalanced as you wish.

That means not worrying so much about not revealing certain patterns with your play, such as always betting big with strong hands.

Online Poker Tournament Strategy

While against stronger opponents you should balance your play by varying your bets and actions so as not to be read so easily, against large fields of less skilled opponents this isn't as great of a concern.

Obviously, the five tips above are not all you need to be successful in small stakes online tourneys, but they should at least help you in your quest to turn a little into a lot!

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Strategy For Large Poker Tournaments

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