With such a massive amount of play throughout the entire tournament, these tend to be some of my most profitable types of tournaments to run during a long session. But, there are some nuances specific to the deep structure that will give you a big edge over your opponents. We’ll go over a number of them in this article.

The first thing to point out, and the most important, is this. Prepare for a LONG day if you plan on playing one of these, especially the $11 variety. Some people will undertake the challenge of playing one of these for the first time, only to discover that, 7 hours later, the money bubble still hasn’t broke yet. The $11 versions can run for upwards of 20 hours! Make sure, if you plan on running one of these, that you start it at the beginning of your docket of tourneys for the day, and make sure you have no engagements that you need to attend to later in the day; I’ve seen plenty of players make it to the final two tables, then mysteriously vanish from play; they probably had to go to work, leave the computer lab, etc.

Also, make sure you’re prepared for the long grind of play, with only five minute breaks to catch up. This means that, for you to win the tournament, you have to stay in top form for almost an entire day of play. If you’re not used to running lengthy tournaments, you may want to reconsider taking on the challenge of the deep stack, at least until you play more big field tournaments. Making one mistake in a tournament can spell your doom, but when you’ve spent 8 hours grinding a tournament, that one mistake can now bust you without a dollar to show for it. Keep this in mind when you make the late stages of one of these tournaments.

Early Stages: Deep Stacks vs Standard MTTs

Raising amounts. When you open, you probably should stick with your normal earlystage opening amounts; 3x or 4x is about right for a standard open in the first few hours of play. But, when reraising with your premium hands, a larger than average three bet may be in order. Where as a standard three bet of a t60 open may be t180-t250, I’m much more inclined to make my three bet t300-t400 instead. By only popping it to t250, you offer your remaining opponents inviting implied odds to crack your aces; you still have t4,750 sitting behind your original open, and if other people get involved, it makes it a trivial call by the time it gets to them. But, the stiffer three bets make it harder to justify the implied odds calls, and make it far easier to make a bet on the flop that chases out draws effectively; with t500 in the middle, you can continuation bet t300-t500, but with t800 in the pot, you can start to bet the bigger amounts (t500-t800) that can discourage drawing and cracking your monsters.

Hand selection. Your implied odds to hit hands go up exponentially thanks to the huge amount of chips every has behind them. Look to take flops with pocket pairs and connected hands as much as possible. Suitedness matters, but not as much as it would in a more shallow stacked tournament. If a flush hits, and you get into the fourth or fifth bet after making it, you’re probably going to be staring directly at the nuts; suited aces are the only “suited hand” that have a big value, flush wise. If you make a flush in a deep stack, be cautious with it, especially if there are multiple players involved in the hand. Way too often, you’ll see a player flop a flush with 56h and get 250 BB’s in the middle, only to find themselves drawing dead to A2h. Look for hands that make the nuts or close to it, so that when you do make a hand with them, you can extract maximum value from them. I’ll happily take a flop on the button with 56o and 79o for t60 in the first level; the potential pay off of t4,940 is too much to pass up for taking flops.

Hand Ranges.This early in the tournament, I’m taking flops with any pocket pair, any suited ace, and most suited connected or connected cards bigger than 45 for any bet that doesn’t represent more than 2% of my starting stack (t100) and hoping to flop a monster. I’m raising very few hands, myself, however; just big pocket pairs and AK; and I’m looking to isolate with those specific hands. I’m three betting with only three specific hands; AA, KK, and QQ, and that’s it; AKo and JJ do not go in my three betting range, ever in the early stages of a deep stack. I’m also only four betting AA/KK; you want these reraises to be big, isolating reraises that deter multiway action. You’re just looking for spots to get a significant amount of chips in as a big favorite; these hand ranges will generate the kind of hands that either completely brick the flop, or give you a draw to the nuts, which is the easiest way to tap your opponents for big chunks of chips.

Bubble and Endgame for Deep Stack MTTs

These strategies will serve you well through the first 4-5 hours of the tournament, while the average stack will start to decline for the super deep realm to a more manageable M20-M25 average, at this point. When you see the stacks start to fall to Earth a bit, usually beginning around the 200/400 level, you may want to shift your strategy from hitting flops with drawing hands to a more straightforward game; blind stealing, lighter three betting, and your usual MTT game can now be implemented effectively, as if you were the big stack at your table in a regular field MTT. This will continue on until around the 6th or 7th hour, around the 500/1k blind level. This is where the bubble kicks in, and the bubble, both for the money and for the final table, are incredibly tricky spots for players.

You’ll find that deep stack money bubbles bust significantly slower than your normal MTT bubble; your short stack may have 15 BB’s remaining, allowing him to sit and wait three or four orbits before being forced to make a move. This would normally mean that, with a big stack, you could simply run the table over, but a unique problem comes into play; everyone at the table is likely to be M10 or deeper! This forces you to rethink the normal approach of the bubble that you’re used to taking and use a slightly different plan of attack for it.

When the actual bubble hits, play will slow to an absolute crawl, compared to your normal MTT. Let your table play a few hands once you’re two or three spots from the money, and observe which of the big stacks suddenly wake up and start raising a lot, and which of them seem content to sit back and wait for the money to burst. Using that information, you can pick on the habitual openers with liberal three bets and stay out of the way of the conservative openers. Many players believe that everyone plays tight on the deep stack bubble, and as such, adhere to being rock tight until it busts, even with a monster stack. Instead of using chip counts to determine our plan of attack, like we would in a general MTT, however, we have to use player activity to determine who to pick on and who to stay away from.

Expect the average stack size to hover between M15 and M30 from this point until the final table. Final table play will be a bit unique; many players will completely shut down playing anything but monster hands, simply because they don’t want the 9-20 hours they just played in this tournament to go to waste because they misplayed a single hand. Others will be furiously raising and reraising, trying to bring the tournament to a conclusion for them as quickly as possible, either by winning the tournament or busting out quickly.

Take an orbit or so to determine which players are playing which way, and adjust your game plan accordingly. Remember; unless you’re M7 or less, you’re not short enough to have to just shove preflop; you still have plenty of play with a 20k stack when the blinds are 600/1.2k/(125), even if the average stack is more like 60k. Recognize when you’re genuinely short, instead of panicking when you have a third of the second stack. These tournaments allow you plenty of leeway if you do slip up, even at the final table. Just be patient and find the spots to attack, and you can make a long run to win one of these marathon tournaments.

But, what about actually applying this information and utilizing it? It seems like an incredibly complex and difficult concept to undertake, and it is; a lot of these spots are feel based more than anything. But, by beginning to see spots such as these in tournaments and cash games, you can find incredibly profitable spots that are completely and utterly non-existent to most players.

One such example came a few days ago in a small field rebuy tournament I was playing in on PokerStars. We were down to 7 players at our table, and had been for a few orbits. I had been playing with the players at our table for a considerable time, and had recognized most of them to be pretty tight, but competent players. We were all M7+, so everyone had some play left in their stacks. A peculiar thing had been happening with the pot sizes though that piqued my interest. There would be about 4 or 5 raise and take it type hands, then a slightly bigger pot, a few more raise and take it hands, then a big confrontation for a lot of chips. Immediately after that, it went back to “first in wins” for a few hands. After recognizing the pattern and getting some chips to use, I decided to test out the theory after a small blind/big blind battle that ended in AK getting cracked by 1010.

The next hand, I was in the hi-jack with 26o, and I opened to 2.5x, and got 4 of the quickest folds you’ve ever seen in an online tournament. The next hand, UTG+1, I was dealt 56s, and again opened 2.5x, and again, the entire table quickly folded. Now UTG, I was dealt K5o, and opened for a third consecutive hand, again to 2.5x.

Again, everyone folded, and in three hands, I had picked up a nice chunk of chips to my stack with 3 hands that I would normally never open with. The patterns of the table and the tempo shift of the all-in confrontation, combined with the end of the tournament looming, made it a lot easier to be willing to open up and pounce on the table, especially given that the two players involved in the all-in pot were very likely to stay out of significant action for awhile. The cards that I held didn’t matter; the chips that were out there were meant to be stolen, given the tempo of the table.

You can use tempo against specific players, too. A lot of tempo has to do with staying one step ahead of the rest of the field when it comes to shifts in tempo. If someone has been opening light, you 3-bet light. If they recognize that and start 4-betting you light, you 5-bet light, and so on. A lot of people, however, will just continue to ramp up the aggression without rhyme or reason once the 4-betting light begins, without realizing that, a significant portion of the time, it’s the player that sees the big jump in the hand range of the opener and tightens back up that wins the monster pot when he gets A9s to 5 bet shove into his KK. You can off-balance a lot of players by simply keeping track of your aggression level towards that player and dialing it up and down before he can figure out what’s going on.

This is a wonderful concept live, as players are a lot more likely to show you, verbally or otherwise, their frustration with your constant aggression. At a $2/$5 game in Glasgow, KY, I was able to control the player on my right, a complete psycho and super aggro player, by leveling up and down to directly shift his own aggression. He liked opening to $25 (a 5x open) from almost any position. I waited until I had the button or cutoff on him, and when he opened the pot first, I 3 bet him big ($90-$120), with position, with a wider range than normal; any pair, suited connected, etc, and watched him generally fold to my big raise.

I pulled this off about 3 or 4 times before I attempted it again with 89h and got immediately 4-bet to $400, with a stern, frustrated look on his face. I hemmed and hawed for a few seconds, then said, “Man, I don’t know if I can lay down nines here, you gonna show?” He didn’t say anything, and I flashed a single nine before folding. He then quickly turned over his QJs and raked the pot, saying nothing. Th table got a few chuckles, but I knew he had ramped up his aggression level, and all I had to do now is pick up a premium hand, and expect to get all-in with him. I had shown I was willing to 3-bet/fold, which had to register in his mind as a tempo shift for me; he’s now expecting me to flat hands like that and just 3-bet with monster hands, since he had just squashed my aggression level.

Or so he thought.

The next time he opened, I again 3-bet, but I changed the amount down to $70, a raise of only $45 more. When it got back to him, he paused for a bit, then folded, and asked to see my hand. I flashed him an ace and mucked the suited 4 that went with it, letting him reaffirm himself that I’m only popping him with monsters while keeping my level of tempo the same. He now “has my tempo” in his head, while I’m really completely the opposite in where I’m going. A few hands later, I finally got to set the trap. It folded to him on the button, and he opened to $30. I flatted with QQ and a stack of about $600 behind, and the big blind folded. I flopped a safe board of 4h5c9d and quickly checked to Mr. Aggro, who bet $80. I continued with the trap, flatting the bet from him, and checking the 4d on the turn. Mr. Aggro studied me for a bit, then slid $200 into the pot in two towers. A lot of players would simply put their last $320 in the pot here, but I knew this guy wanted to make the last bet, and I knew he thought my raises were strong and my calls were weak, so I tank-called the $200. Another 4 peeled off on the river, and after a brief tank, I checked to Mr. Aggro again. He immediately flicked 4 black $100 chips in the pot, and I couldn’t have beat him in the pot any faster. He turned over a pair of sixes, and I had successfully taken 120 BB’s off of my opponent by allowing him to think the tempo of the game was set to his aggression, not my deception.

If I had shoved the turn, Mr. Aggro would’ve read that as strength (like earlier, when I 3-bet and showed the ace) and could’ve gotten away from the hand there. My tempo shift earned me an extra $320.

These are just two examples of tempo shifting in hold’em; just look for spots where the chips are stagnating or shifting wildly, or players that are particularly aggressive or tight, and use the tempo of the game to keep yourself one step ahead of them.

In effect, it gives you an excuse to take negative equity gambles in the present in order to set up positive equity situations in the future based on the big stack you’ve accrued. Let’s go over a few scenarios that put block theory in action.

We’ll put ourselves in a PokerStars MTT, a 6 max, with stacks as follows.

Blinds 100/200

Seat 1- 6,000
Seat 2- 7,500
Seat 3- 2,000
You- 8,000
Seat 5- 4,000
Seat 6- 3,000

You have the chip lead at your table, but not by a margin to be comfortable with. Block theory tells us that we want to put a block of chips between us and the nearest group of players, in order to bring about more profitable scenarios in future levels.

So, who are we grouped with? The first two seats have M20+, so we’re in with them. They’re to our right, though, which is desirable for us.

Who are we looking to get chips from, then? The seat directly to our right is M6.6, and looking to chip up soon. If we eliminate him, we may have the two stacks that compare to us in chips directly to our right for a short time, depending on how deep the tourney is. And, moving up to 10,000 chips distances us significantly from the 6k stack, and gives us a bit of a cushion on the 7.5k stack.

With a stack big enough to absorb a blow from either or those stacks, it forces them to tighten up a bit against us until they can chip back up to our level. Given this information, it becomes clear that the short stack is the stack we need to be willing to eliminate to block up in chips.

The question, then, is how loose are we willing to get when we play against the short stack? We need to look at the hit we take if we play against the short stack and lose; it drops us to 6k, which is still M20 and keeps us very much in the block we were in to begin with. So, we can afford to be a bit more loose than normal when calling a 10 BB shove. Assuming that normally, my calling range against a typical player’s shove at 10 BB’s is any pair, Ax, K5+, Q8+, J10, I may add the rest of the kings, Q5+, and J8+ to that range if the block of chips I gain from knocking out the short stack makes me difficult to play against.

It isn’t a huge amount of extra hands (9 more) but they all are going to generally be behind the range of Seat 3’s shoving range. I’m willing to take the gamble to block up, though, and if it doesn’t work, he doesn’t jump above me in chips, and I stay in the block with the rest of the bigger stacks. It’s a slightly negative gamble with huge returns if it works; which is a big asset to have when trying to run deep in large field MTT’s.

The middle stages, however, present a unique challenge, a sort of limbo where the proper strategy isn’t always so clearly defined.

With that challenge in mind, we’ve prepared a list of ten simple strategies – commandments, if you like – to help you navigate the often murky waters of MTT middle stages, courtesy of MosesBet.com.

1. Open Up Your Starting Hand Range

In the middle stages of tournaments players adopting an overly tight strategy (you know who you are) should being to loosen up, especially in late positions and on tight tables. After the antes begin to start you should be 3betting your mid-pockets pairs and high suited connectors along with your premium hands in mid and late position.

Too many players start to play excessively tight in the middle stages, trying to cruise to the bubble. Don’t be one – instead, be a player who pads your stack with their chips.

2. Steal Tight / TAG Players Blinds

The size of the blinds makes them worth stealing in the mid stages of a tournament. With tight players on the SB/BB you should be raising the pot with almost anything from late position – tight players only have a calling range of about 5-10% (AK,AQ, 1010+). Loose players acting on the blinds will call you much more often however (as high as 60%) so avoid maniacal blind-stealing against these players – unless they have a tendency to give up if they miss the flop.

Remember, tight players just don’t play back without a hand – even if you stole the blinds last time you had the button with junk, force yourself to raise again the next time and the next time until someone makes a stand.

3. Defend Your Blinds

This is something a lot of bad MTT players fail at. Defending the blinds is just as important as stealing them, however most players go about this wrongly. The correct method to defend your blinds is by hitting back with a 3bet. You should never just be “calling” on the blinds to defend them. This is almost always negative EV play because you are out of position.

An exception to this rule is when you’re playing against loose opponents who tighten up pre-flop. In this case a profitable trick is to flat-call and cbet the flop hoping your opponent missed (this happens more than 60% of the time).

4. Don’t Slow Play Premium Hands Pre-Flop

Although there are occasions when small-ball strategy and limp shoves work with pocket Kings or Aces, the majority of the time you should always be getting your chips in the pot early with premium hands. While TAG players generally do this to avoid the flop, I believe loose players should also take note because you simply cannot afford to let others else limp into the pot in a tournament.

The other benefit of not slow-playing your big hands (on any street) – it builds the pot quicker, and with stacks often fairly deep in the middle stages of the tournament, playing fast gives you the best chance to extract the maximum value with your strong hands.

5. Value Shove More

Shoving for value (aka overbetting) is very effective and +EV in the mid-stages of a tournament. Why? Again, in the mid-stages the blinds are big enough that any contested pot is going to be a pretty fair size, and the larger the pot gets, the more likely it becomes that your opponent will make a big mistake trying to win it.

Against regulars or in small fields, you need to make sure you mix your game up when shoving. If you are only jamming your stack in the pot with marginal hands and slow-playing premium hands, you will get caught quickly. Mixing your value shoves though turns you into a more dangerous opponent.

6. Cbet the Flop More Often

With two or less opponents in the hand you should always be cbetting the flop with a half-pot sized bet. You only need to succeed 1/3 times to break even, and against weak opponents this is always the correct play.

As with any strategy, you need to pick your spots with this one – beware especially of aggressive opponents who flat you preflop out of position and then check, because you’re going to see a check-raise a disproportionate amount of the time. Same goes with competent opponents who flat you in position – they’re either strong or prepared to act strong, so adjust your frequency accordingly. Against everyone else, go after those chips often and aggressively.

7. Overlimp from Late Position

There is so much +EV from limping into flops with marginal/non-premium hands at this stage it’s unreal. Over-limping from late position with a marginal hand can be justified because of your position and the excellent price an already limped pot offers. If your opponents miss the flop you can easily exploit them, and if you have to bail on the flop, you’re only out one BB.

The more opponents in the pot, the bigger the implied odds and the more hands you should be inclined to call with. Beware, however, of overlimping with shorter stacks in the blinds, as a parade of limpers may well motivate them to shove, sending your hand (and your implied odds) into the muck.

8. Play Your Stack, Not Your Cards

A crucial tip for playing the middle stages of tournaments is that your stack size and your opponents’ is more important justifying your play than your cards. General guidelines: with a big stack (particularly when the effective size is small) you can call with a broader range of hands and set more traps. With medium stacks, you’re not looking to play post-flop so much as you’re looking for a good spot to re-steal preflop. With small stacks around 10xBBs, you should only be thinking about jamming or folding pre-flop.

9. Re-Steal More

You shouldn’t be afraid to re-steal in tournaments; it’s not as complex as it seems and if pulled off correctly (against the right type of opponent) it’s an extremely profitable move which can really pad your stack and give you a strong table image.

Who should you re-steal from? Loose opponents who open wide but back down once someone stands up to them, especially if your stack size is such that a re-steal makes you look committed. Tight opponents who mindlessly open the CO and button without regard to their opponents in the blinds. Who should you avoid? If you’re deep-stacked, other deep stacks, especially if you’re out of position; also, look out for hyper-aggressive players who are capable of 4 / 5 betting light when the stack sizes are such that you’re not committed to call a re-shove.

10. Tighten Up You Calling Range as you Approach the Money

ICM concepts and tournament equity mean the risks of calling over-bets are much greater when you’re approaching the bubble. Usually the risk/rewards ratio makes it -$EV to call an opponent’s over-bet even if you know you’re a marginal favourite (1010 vs AQ for example). If you need to learn more about ICM principles I suggest purchasing the appropriate SNG/tournament tools or software (I personally recommend SNG wizard).

That’s not to say you shouldn’t be aggressive on the bubble – aggression is fine, because you’ll often win the pot without a showdown. Just be wary of calling off your chips in situations where you’re likely to only have a small edge, as this is a stage in the tournament where taking a race for a big chunk of your stack isn’t always an optimal strategy.

This article was contributed by Mosesbet.com – MTT Poker Strategy

A perfect example of this is in the middle stages of a tournament, when blinds are getting high, but antes haven’t kicked in. A tight, solid player limps from 1st position for $150. Everyone folds to you in the small blind, and you look down at 8c2h. You have a $1275 stack, $75 invested, and $375 in the pot, and it costs you $75 to call. In this situation, a fold should be automatic. Look at your pot odds; you’re paying $75 to attempt to win a pot of $450, giving you 5:1 direct odds to win the pot. The problems in this calculation, however, are less obvious. One thing to consider is the big blind, who has yet to act on his hand. If he raises, even if he just doubles the blind, are you willing to invest another $150 to see the flop? If you answered no, congrats, at least you’re getting out with some chips intact.

But, if you say, “Wait, I put $150 chips in the pot already, how can I fold for $150 more? It’s that pot odds thing, right?” Your pot odds to call $150 more actually remain the same; (5:1 @ $150 to win $900) two problems arise from making this call, though. The first one stems from your implied odds, “If I hit my hand, how much can I expect to profit, knowing sometimes I may lose when I hit?” By investing more money in as an obvious underdog in the hand, you naturally detract from the amount of money you can extract later in the hand. And with something as weak as 82o, you’re going to have to flop something powerful; two pair or trips; to feel like you have an extracting type of hand. Those flops come very infrequently, though, something in the neighborhood of 30:1. Your pot odds (5:1) and your implied odds (with $975 chips left, you could only extract $1,950 chips from the remaining two players, giving you just 2:1 against the size of the pot) are your guideline for making this an easy fold.

The second, and more important reason, is the utilization of those chips in more profitable situations. Instead of limping in the small blind for $75 with 82o, leaving yourself $1,200, why not just muck, keep your $75, and look for a better opportunity to wield your chips against the blinds? The extra $75, seemingly insignificant, can be the difference between your stack being able to steal blinds and the big blind being pot committed to call your shove. Especially in later levels, where stack sizes are tiny compared to the blinds, half a big blind can make all the difference in how a hand plays out.

With this in mind, it’s good to have a guideline of sorts for limping/raising standards when playing out of the blinds. Notice that the guideline changes as the tournament progresses; middle-late and late stage tournament play will be discussed in a later article.

Based on PokerStars Blind Structures ($1,500 starting chips, assuming your stack is roughly average)

Early Stages ($10/$20-$75/$150)

Unraised Pots

Raise- QQ+, AKs (NOTE: Be sure the raise here is stout; add roughly one big blind to your normal raise for every limper in the pot, so if, for example, 4 players limp in the $10/$20 level and you’re dealt AKs, instead of making it $60, you’d make it $120.This way, you’re negating your positional disadvantage by charging players incorrectly to see the flop.)

Call- 22+, Ax+, Kx+, Q5+, J7+, 107+, any connected suited or one gap connected suited cards (NOTE: This is as loose as you’ll see requirements here, as the stages increase, the bottom level of calling hands drop out and the upper tier of calling hands start to raise.)

Raised Pots

Reraise- QQ+, AKs (NOTE: With all of these hands except AA, my reraise is also going to be on the big side, somewhere between 3.5x-4.5x the original raise. So, if a middle position player makes it $100, my reraise is going to be between $350-$450 instead of the typical $300. I prefer to end the hand now rather than take a flop, especially with QQ.)

Call-66+, A10s+, AJo+, KQs (NOTE: This area can be a bit tricky; if there are two or more callers, I stretch out to all pocket pairs and most suited aces, but if it’s been folded to you, I drop sixes, sevens, A10s, KQs and AJo out of my range.)

Early-Middle Stages ($100/$200-$300/$600 [$50])

Unraised Pots

Raise- 77+, A10s+, AJo+, KQs (NOTE: We added a few hands here to take advantage of the antes that have now kicked in, along with the additional knowledge that no one in this pot has shown a great interest in it. Be wary of early position limpers, but, for the most part, go ahead and attack the blinds and antes with this range.)

Call- 22-66, Axs, K10s+, KJo, KQo, QJs, Q10s, J10s (NOTE: Your hand range to call with has dropped dramatically, here, but the escalating blinds force your hand, here. Also, if the table has folded to your small blind or you’re in the big blind and only the small blind has called, all the hands in this list become fine raising hands. You only have one player to beat, so aggression is key. If there is more than one caller, however, it’s best to just stick to the guideline.)

Raised Pots

Raise-JJ+,AQs, AKo/AKs (NOTE: We can add a few new hands to our reraising range here, as the escalating blinds will make stealing more prevalent. The size of the reraise here becomes more important, though. Against a single raiser, if their stack remaining behind them is fairly short, M=8 or less, I prefer to shove rather than make a 3x reraise with JJ/AQo. Example; a player with $4,600 opens for $600 on the button, and you have AQo in the $200 BB. If you make it $1,800, he can flat for $1,200 and leave you in an awkward position on flops with overs (JJ) or medium cards (AQ) given your position in the hand. In order to negate that positional disadvantage, a shove here works wonders. With the stronger hands, the 2.5x-3x reraise can be more effective at extracting chips.)

Call-77+, A10s+, AJo+, KQ (NOTE: The blinds aren’t high enough here to justify getting reckless with these hands, if you have a good sized stack of M>8 or so. If you suspect a button raiser of being a bit light, any of these hands can justify a reraise, but against EP and MP players, a flat call seems more prudent.)

Middle Stages-Late Stages ($400/$800-Final Table)

Unraised Pots

Raise- 77+, A9s+, A10o+, KQs/o, KJs (NOTE: We widen our range as the other players in the tournament widen their ranges to attack the blinds, which now account for crucial chunks of their stack. Given that information, we can widen our reraise range to take full advantage; a lot of advanced tournament players have much wider ranges for raising than ours. We’re keeping ours at a slightly more conservative range in order to make things simpler on our end. We have some weaker hands in there, like KJs and 77, to throw off people who expect us to be playing tight somewhat. But, in general, we’re continuing with a solid, tight aggressive game with this range, which should be wide enough to pick off bluffers and get paid off when they have a hand they can put their stack in with.)

Call- In this stage of the tournament, given our relative skill level, I think choosing to never flat call, as a beginning player, is actually an acceptable strategy. By only reraising or folding, you take flop play out of the equation from your blind play, meaning position is rarely a factor in your decision making processes. As you become a more advanced player, you can start to do a few more advanced maneuvers, like the stop and go, or taking a flop to float a hyper-aggressive player in order to take it from him on the turn. Until you’re comfortable with that, however, advocating a strict raise/fold policy from the blinds later in a tournament is perfectly acceptable.

Raised Pots

Raise- 1010+, AJs+, AQo+ (Again, some fluctuation here is needed to elaborate our ranges a bit better. If the raiser is early position and has at least a medium stack, I think 1010 and AJs are OK to just muck. If the raiser is late position, I’m fully capable of 3-betting with 55 or A8s if I feel like the raiser is weak and I can take the pot most of the time.)

Call- I’m still inclined to go with the raise/fold philosophy of playing the blinds here, especially if you’re a rookie, with one glaring exception. AA/KK can work as a flat calling hand if your opponent is hyper-aggro. Your opponent opens on the Co to 2.5x, and you’re in the BB with AA. The best way to extract chips from a hyper-aggro player is to flat, then check/raise-shove any flop. A 3-bet, especially from you, given the tight guidelines this primer has laid out, will induce a fold from all but the top tier hands if the opponent is observant. The flat-check play, though, can cause your opponent to c-bet most flops with air against you.

Blind play in NLH tournaments can be one of the most tricky aspects of your game to develop. By starting with these rigid, tight guidelines, and learning how to adapt them to your game and expand from them, you’ll find it easier than most players to elevate your game in blind play to another level. We’ll talk about the float and the stop and go in a later article, but for now, start utilizing the ranges listed in your game and get more profitable immediately.

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It also depends on something else as well, whether or not the opinion is accurate. But it is our ability to correctly interpret information and act upon it that is perhaps the primary skill in poker. Whether it is interpreting data in an actual game or just reading a poker book, how we interpret the information will go an awful long way in deciding if we are successful or not.

In this article I will be exploring one of pokers supposed golden rules for No Limit Hold’em tournaments, that is to not go up against another big stack if you have a big stack yourself unless you have a premium hand. I have lost count of the number of times that I have encountered this supposed piece of poker wisdom and cringed whenever I read it.

The people who spew out the advice tend to be repeating somebody else’s advice or they do not have enough time or space to properly explain what they mean. I have been ghosting the big tournaments on Ongame recently on Pokerloco (www.pokerloco.com/thedean) and towards the middle stages of the tournament, I was definitely seeing big stacks back down too much to blatant aggression from other big stacks.

But the “big stack vs big stack” rule goes against what poker actually is. A game of incomplete information where the only rule is that there are no rules. Once again this statement takes a bit of explaining because it could easily be misinterpreted as me saying that you can do whatever you like at the table. But there we go again, that word interpretation rearing its ugly head once more. But the fact of the matter is that the words “always”, “never” and “rule” should be words that are erased from your poker dictionary.

Because each one of those words infers that you do something in a certain way without deviation which is very rarely the case in poker. There are exceptions to every rule and poker is no different. Another name for these “rules” and a much better name at that would be general guidelines!

Of course it is perfectly obvious that if you are fortunate or skilful enough to be in possession of the second largest stack on the table then getting into a major confrontation with the largest stack on the table can bust you because they have you covered in chips. But if you thought that this means that you should avoid conflict with them at all costs unless you have a premium hand then you are wrong.

If you never defended yourself from an attack from another big stack then that would just encourage more and more attacks. This is what many players do when they get a big stack in a tournament. They are so proud of their monster stack that they will not risk it for almost anything unless they have a premium hand. The guys who play like this may as well play with their cards turned up.

Regular readers of my articles will tell you that I am very big on analogies whenever I am trying to get an important point across. This is because analogies go an awful long way to helping people see the underlying concept when it is being compared to something that they understand and know. For this example, I am going to quote the famous incident from the early 1960’s, the Cuban missile crisis. In this instance we have the two largest stacks in the game, the United States of America and Russia. By far the two biggest superpowers in the world at that time! The Russians by making a move to place nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba were in fact making a very aggressive move against the other largest stack in the game.

But politics like poker is a series of individual incidents that are ongoing and linked together in ways that are sometimes very subtle. If some of our poker “strategists” had been working as security advisors to the then president Kennedy then they would have advised him not to retaliate and to concede the issue to the Soviets. Simply because of the fact that a big stack should not go up against another big stack!

This action would have had the effect of avoiding a confrontation at that particular time. But it is sheer folly to think that backing down to aggression is avoiding confrontation. History has taught us countless times that backing down to aggression only fuels more aggression. In a way, the Russians were steal raising the Americans big blind in the same way that poker players do thousands of times a day both in bricks and mortar card rooms and online.

If a big stack is attacking your big blind or just trying to steal from you in general and he perceives that you are fearful of a confrontation with him then he is likely to attack you even further. Folding is only deferring the confrontation to a later date. If you fold because your hand is junk then that is a different story but folding because you fear a confrontation is asking for trouble and indicates a serious flaw in your game.

The correct way to counter this threat is to devise an acceptable defence without it leading to the total decimation of your stack. This is in essence what the Americans did in the missile crisis, they stood up to the aggression of the Russians and sent out the message that they could not be pushed around either politically or militarily. What was basically happening was that the Americans and the Russians were playing a classic game of “chicken” but escalated onto a gigantic scale.

The Russians were cold and calculating and this makes them better Chess players but the Americans are better poker players and this issue was about bluffing on a global scale. Whether the Americans would have gone all the way into a third world war is extremely doubtful but the important point was that they convinced the Russians that they would when they sent their battle fleet out to confront the Russian convoy that was carrying the missiles.

The Americans constructed a way to stop the aggression of the Russians without it leading to world war three. This is precisely what any player who has a big stack must do if they are constantly being bombarded with bets and raises from another big stack. There are many times in poker where you simply have to fight fire with fire. It can be a very uncomfortable thing to have to do because getting involved with another big stack whether it is in a tournament or a cash game always runs the danger of severely crippling your stack.

The skill is to make your opponent think that you are not going to stand for their aggression and will put your entire stack at risk at anytime if need be even if secretly, you have no such desire to do it. So the next time that you see or hear of this much repeated piece of poker wisdom, remember the analogy with the Cuban missile crisis and you will be better prepared to handle the situation the next time it arises.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson can be seen at www.pokerloco.com/thedean and on his blog at www.pokersharkpool.com

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In this article we’ll cover the tight strategy for the early stages of tournament play from a pro-con perspective. It’s up to you to determine what approach fits best into your game, but hopefully the below will give you a starting point for analyzing whether or not tight really is right for you.

Pros of Playing Tight

Reduced Image Benefit to Playing Loose Early
Tables break quickly in the early stages of tournaments, especially in online tournaments. That means you’re not likely to get one of the key benefits of playing a loose style – a loose image that makes it likely that your opponents will pay off your good hands. Built into a loose strategy is an ‘image cost’ – an investment that you generally need to recoup by getting paid off – and if your opponents are leaving the table before you can collect on that investment, it may just be wasted chips.

Harder to Accurately Range Opponents in Early Stages
Playing loose means you’re heading into a lot of pots – and in the early stages when stacks are deep, you’ll probably end up playing a decent amount of pots out of position. Your opponents are going to be a little tougher to range accurately for a few reasons. One, because stacks are still probably very deep relative to the blinds, players will make odder preflop (and even post-flop) calls and raises, inflating their possible hand range. Two, during the early stages of a tournament you simply don’t have much info on your opponents and are likely to be against a fairly random assortment of players, so it’s hard to employ generic hand ranges. Playing loosely against a table that’s likely to play with you and hard to accurately range is a recipe for chip spew.

Risk Often Outweighs Reward in Early Stages
The math of chip value in tournaments dictates that the chips you lose are generally more valuable than the chip you gain. Put simply, you’re wrong to take a coinflip at even money for your stack in the early stages because the value of a double up is far outweighed by the cost of busting out of the tournament. Obviously, playing loose doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be shipping your stack into the middle in a marginal situation, but playing tight basically guarantees that you won’t.

Cons of Playing Tight

You Often Don’t Build a Stack for Calling All Ins in Mid Stages
One of the safest and most reliable ways to build a large stack in tournament poker is to have extra chips at blind levels where a large percentage of the field is likely to be short stacked and therefore shoving wide. These spots vary according to tournament structure, but there’s usually a point where the starting stack hits a size threshold 10BBs or less where you’ll see a lot of players who had been nitting it up start to shove wide, especially in late position. Playing loose early can help you accumulate a cushion of chips that allows you to call off these shoves with a fairly wide range without really threatening your standing in the tournament. Being able to take gambles against short stacks is critical, and if you can pick up your chips this way, you can generally avoid marginal spots later on in the tournament. Tight players are often coasting on a smallish or medium stack at this point in the tournament, and have to be more conservative against short stack shoves as a result – passing up some excellent +EV spots that allow a player to build a sizable stack with minimal risk.

You Miss Confrontations With Weak Players
Logic dictates that the early stages of a tournament is the point at which the field has the largest percentage of weak players. Logic also dictates that weak players will part with their chips way more easily than strong players. Logic finally dictates that in order to win chips from a player, you have to be involved in a hand with that player. If you’re nitting it up in the early stages, you’re far less likely to get into confrontations with weak players, meaning you’re missing some of your best chances at chip accumulation with marginal hands. The longer you wait, the less chance you’ll have to pick off their chips – and, to make matters worse, you’ll be facing off against an increasingly stronger field armed with the chips of weak opponents that you should have busted.

Contrarian Strategies are Usually Optimal Strategies
In poker, your general goal is to figure out what your opponents expect you to do and then do the opposite. That’s not a lock, but as far as generalized approaches go, it’s pretty close. So, if everyone’s playing tight in the early stages of MTTs, it stands to reason that you should do … not that. Playing loose in early stages will certainly violate the expectations of your opponents – at least some of them – and should, in theory, give you an edge as a result. Obviously it’s not enough to simply do the opposite of prevailing strategy – you still have to be a competent poker player in other regards – but recognizing a spot where you can apply a contrarian approach is generally an opportunity in poker.

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Here’s a sample hand that will help illustrate some things you should be thinking about in those spots. This hand is taken from the $20 Rebuy 6-max tournament on Full Tilt Poker. The rebuy period is closed.

You have Jacks. You don’t have any particular history with the players at this table, but the SB has proven to be very stubborn in confrontations with other players.

You certainly aren’t forced to raise here – you can call off and hope to set or catch a safe flop. However, if you choose to raise, which is better – a standard raise or a shove? Let’s consider a couple of questions:

What’s the potential post-flop situation?
If you shove, post-flop is a non issue, so it’s important to consider whether seeing a flop will work in your favor or not. In this spot, let’s say you 3-bet to about 1300 or so. You’ll certainly take the pot fairly often, but your first opponent will be getting nearly 3-1 on the call, and if they call, your second opponent may decide to come along as well. Playing JJ in a built pot, potentially out of position, potentially multi-way with about a pot or less left in your stack can be tricky, as an overcard is going to flop about half the time. When seeing a flop might get you in an awkward spot, consider an all in instead of a standard raise.

Which raise best disguises your hand?
Any raise is designed to get your opponent to hopefully call when you’re stronger and fold when you’re weaker. In this spot you’re not looking to make your hand look stronger than it is, because you’re not going to get a hand stronger than JJ to fold – all you’ll accomplish is making more hands that JJ beats fold. Your goal is to make your hand look as weak as possible. In lower buy in tournaments, all in bets are generally perceived as weaker than standard sized raises – I think your typical player at these levels would be able to talk themselves into putting you on AK or 99 here, which is exactly the sort of thinking you’re hoping for. In higher buy in tournaments you won’t get the same monkey calls, but the question still remains the same – what bet size allows you to misrepresent your hand to your greatest advantage? Whatever bet size allows you to get your opponent to misjudge your range to the greatest degree, that’s the one you should choose. In this case, I think an all in allows your opponent to read you as weaker than you are. If you were a little deeper, I think a standard re-raise would work better, as it might look like a squeeze that you can be four bet off of, but a standard raise with these stacks looks pretty strong and you’re unlikely to get medium pairs – the hands you’re crushing – to make a big mistake.

What bet best plays off your opponents tendencies?
Some opponents thrive on post-flop play. Other opponents dread the thought of calling a big preflop raise with a hand like AQ or 99 and then having to play unfavorable flops. Some opponents have no problem folding to a three bet, while others simply cannot let go of a hand once they have some money in the pot. Those tendencies are often critical tiebreakers when you’re considering what kind of raise to make. You basic goal is to determine how you can force your opponent to make the largest possible mistake, given what you know about your opponent. In our example, the stubborn opponent in the SB gives us some motivation to simply shove, as their initial call might serve to pull them into the pot.

The moral of the story: all raises are not created equal. In this hand, it seems like making an all in move is superior to a standard raise. It avoids some preflop awkwardness, makes your hand look far weaker than it actually is and may possibly exploit a core weakness in your opponent. Of course, each hand is a unique situation, but this analysis should give you a framework for determining the optimal point on the raise slider between minimum and maximum the next time you’re in a similar spot.

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Even though they’ve now been popular for quite some time, not all players grasp the basic adjustments necessary to thrive in the rebuy period. You don’t need to plow through multiple buy ins to build a stack – in fact, a strategy that focuses primarily on a strong defensive approach can yield excellent chip results with a minimal investment. Here are a few ways in which the rebuy period differs greatly from a freezeout tournament – hopefully they’ll give you a couple of ideas of how you can shake up your rebuy game and start entering the post-rebuy period with a serious stack.

Reads on Your Opponents are Critical in Early Stages
In a freezeout, you can generally get away with paying less attention to your opponents in the early stages of a tournament. You’re unlikely to be at the table for any great length of time and the majority of players tend to play a pretty straightforward game in the first few levels. In a rebuy, however, it’s critical that you pay close attention to your opponents, as the range of possible opponent behavior can be much, much wider. Identifying the very loose and very aggressive players can pay massive dividends in the rebuy period, so shake your habit of costing through the first levels on auto-pilot and take copious notes – there’s likely to be plenty of action for you to pull from.

Limping Marginal Hands Works
Limping weak connectors in a freezeout is a recipe for chip drain, but that’s not the case during the rebuy period. Those 97o type hands you’re accustomed to ditching in MP can usually be limped (unless the table is super-aggro preflop and there’s likely to be a massive raise behind). Why? First, the rebuy period allows you to call small raises more correctly – it’s simply not as much of a risk to your stack to take highly speculative flops if you can reload that stack. Second, players are generally much looser post-flop during the rebuy period, so your chances of taking down a monster pot if you flop strong increase dramatically.

Limping Strong Hands Works
Limping strong hands in a freezeout is usually a recipe for disaster. Even if you get a raise behind, the stacks are usually so deep that you can’t really extract a lot of value without making your hand pretty obvious. In rebuys, however, players are far more likely to make massive shoves on limps with a wide range. Also, even if you don’t get a raise behind, your overpair has a lot more value post-flop as opponents will commit their stacks on much weaker hands during the rebuy period than they would in a freezeout.

Running Big Bluffs is Generally Useless
The math of bluffing generally requires that you be able to get your opponent to fold a pretty decent hand every now and again for the bluff to be profitable. In a rebuy, very few players are folding pretty decent hands regardless of the pressure you put on them. There are exceptions; if both of you have unusually deep stacks or a board is just horrible for their likely range, a big bluff can still work, but the overwhelming majority of the time a bluff is going to backfire. Save your chips for more profitable endeavors.

Shoving for Value Post-Flop Works
This one’s not rocket science, but tons of players overlook it. In the world of the rebuy period, most players simply aren’t folding reasonable hands like top pair, medium-strength draws and so on. In a world like that, there’s no need for you to massage the pot. Jamming and check-jamming your medium-strength hands and your strong hands will, time after time, get you paid off. Rebuys are not subtle tournaments – you can massively overbet your hands successfully if your opponent already has some chips in or is likely to have hit any piece of the board along with you.

Speculative Calls Pre and Post Flop Can Be Effective and Profitable
The rebuy period plays a lot more like a cash game than a tournament in some ways, and as a result you can afford to play a far wider range against raises and bets than you would in a freezeout. Not only can you replenish your stack, negating some of the risk that usually accompanies such looseness in tournament play, but, again, you’re far more likely to get paid when you do hit due to a similar looseness on the part of your opponents.

Rebuy periods are an interesting, unique part of a tournament, and attentive players who heed the differences can gain a serious chip edge over their opponents. Hopefully the above has given you a starting point for rethinking your own approach and watching your stacks grow while your rebuy costs decrease.

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The video runs a bit over an hour.

PokerPwnage.com is an online poker training site started by HerschelW, a long time member of PTP. PP is primarily focused on MTT instruction and boasts an accomplished roster of MTT pros.

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