Playing Poker Tournaments

Tournament play in poker is different in many ways compared to normal cash games and just because you are good in one of these, doesn’t mean you can also handle the other. The progression of the game is very different when it comes to playing a poker tournament and it is usually easy to spot a player that has not yet learned the special techniques for tournament play.

Maybe the most basic part is of course the blinds that are always increasing at a given interval that all players are aware of before the tournament starts. This has to be taking into consideration regarding how you should play at different stages of the tournament. This can also cause situations where players are forced to act in some ways and other kinds of decision has to be made and they have to really evaluate all their hands if it’s a playable hand or not. While in ring games you can choose to fold endless amounts of hands, this is not an option in tournament play, especially not the further into the tournament you have played. This causes many players to be more aggressive in tournament play than in cash games.

In tournament play all players start at the same level with equal amount of chips and you have an even competition with all players. Buy-ins are always limited, this varies for different tournaments, which means you might have to think once more at certain stages if you might be going out. All players have to worry about being eliminated and that creates another psychological edge compared to cash games where players can re-buy or add on more chips whenever they want. In regards to this, aggressive players usually have an advantage here as well since they are then more confident and they have an edge over more conservative players.

All these facts make poker tournaments a very different game then playing cash game poker. You need to play a larger amount of hands to make sure you are not falling behind and becoming short stacked, especially when the blinds are getting higher.

These kind of basic things are important to think about if you want to succeed in a poker tournament and there are also a lot of psychological factors that comes in mind.

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