When going to satellite poker tournaments, which are becoming more and more popular online, there is a tendency to play much more tight than a normal no limit tournament. Some Associate this as the death of the tournament, I assure you that it’s not the way to go.
In my opinion satellite tournaments are the most profitable way to play poker as there are many freebies sleepers that you can lose and yet still access the cash. That said lets go over some basic strategies.
Turbo Tournaments – The first thing to say about turbo tournaments is you have to be extremely patient. Particularly in the early stages the blinds are so low it’s not reasonable to be playing with a lot of hands. You should usually only be playing a pocket pair plus in the early stages you should really only be playing AA, KK, QQ. Now with QQ you have a better chance of taking down a big hand (sleeper suited connectors, depo 20 bonus 30 to 5x) but still requires you to hit a flop.
The strategy here is that you just have to survive. If you are playing tight you go longer just trying to survive. If you are playing loose you attempt to steal the blinds and win when you have a lot of chips. Now I’m sure you are realizing how important it is to be able to win the tournament in many ways and how important this concept is to your poker strategy.
Now let’s say you are playing in a turbo tournament and you are dealt pocket 9’s. You are sitting on the button and everyone folds to you. Do you even bother playing them? Lets take a look.
You are holding pocket 10’s in the small blind and everyone folds. What are your odds of winning? They are approximately.3%. Your hand has less than a 30% chance of winning. You need to play these cards in a turbo tournament because the blinds won’t kill you. You can still take this small risk because the risks are worth it. That’s the nature of strategy. Sometimes we win and that’s all that matters.
Furthermore, the question of playing pocket 9’s in the small blind is not even debated. I have heard many stories about pros stealing blinds, possibly the most talented poker story since Johnny Chan’s dog crapped out on the rail.
If you contested the raise preflop, you probably would have never seen the hand to begin with. Many players don’t realize that they are capable of building a pot, sometimes right there in the small blind. For example, when the antes started to raise, rather than just call, you should do a raise. If you can culture the button to fold, it will make it easier to win the pot since the players remaining will be antes to your left as well.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s look at a more concrete example. Let’s say you have 8-9 off suit and raise 3x the blind. Of course you will be called. It doesn’t matter because we know that a raise is usually enough to drive out the weaker hands that you can see dead in the other rooms. You make a probe bet of around half the pot. This is the time you have to decide whether to make a play or not.
If you are going to play your hand, you should definitely raise. If you have nothing and the flop looks terrible, like an Ace high flop, you should probably bet out. What you are trying to do iseight or better. If you have REMARKABLE pocket contrast eights, you don’t really care if they are sixes or threes. You will still have about a 30% chance to win according to the odds the board has revealed.
If you have something, like thousands of dollars in a satellite poker tournament, you should definitely play it. Winning the satellite is valuable because it can secure your entry into the weekly final. This is the big one. Nobody has made it in blindly, playing a single Hand and hoping to get lucky on the flop.
In these highly televised final leagues, players leave the amateurish play of the amateur and enter the arena of highly televised, final league poker. Watch these players. These players are better than you. At least this season, there is a recap available with the press conference each week. Make sure you recap these players and don’t be afraid to castigate them for being horrible. Make sure you award the player who played the most unthinkably with the hardware.
Down below I am going to list the ten Worst Poker Players in the world. By the standards of the poker playing community, these are the Worst Poker Players in the world:
- Doyle Brunson
It is an sad day when Doyle Brunson tops the list of worst poker players.