Tips for Winning a Poker Tournament

If you want to give multi table tournaments a shot then you’ll need to change your strategy from single table tournaments as it’s completely different. There are some questions you should ask yourself before you even join an MTT and we’ll take a brief look at those questions now so you can ensure you want to play a multi table tournament.

• Ensure the reward is worth the fees spent and time spent playing.

• Multi table tournaments take time so ensure you have the time to commit to playing out the tournament.

• Clearly make sure you understand that anything can happen in a MTT and you could get severely unlucky in late rounds and there is nothing you can do.

Some of my favorite sites for MultiTableTournaments include Carbon Poker,  FullTiltPoker, and TitanPoker.com. You can also practice MTTs for free at PokerStar.net

If you still would like to compete in an MTT after reading through the above three questions then you’re ready to play. Make sure you go to the bathroom and grab some food and a drink before signing up for the tournament. Once seated in the tournament you should begin executing your MTT strategy and I’m going to walk you through some tips for winning your tournament.

• A lot of mistakes players make early in the tournament is playing too loosely because they aren’t on the leaderboard. When the blinds rise above 10,000 chips the lead will be switched often so you need to focus on playing tight poker in the beginning stages. When you receive monster hands make sure you capitalize on them and slowly build your chip stack up.

• In the middle stages of your tournament you may be switched around tables a couple times and you need to relate to the new players. Find out who the chip leader is on the table and also the low stack. You should continue playing tightly right now and still only trying to capitalize on your monster hands. The leaders in the middle stages of the tournament are often loose and have been getting lucky so don’t worry about them and focus on your game.

• In the later stages of the tournament when things are winding down you need to change your style based on your chip stack. Almost every hand is going to be an all-in from somebody because the blinds are going to be high at this point. If you’re short stacked then you need to make a move now and hope for some luck when going all-in. If you have a medium or large stack then you can continue playing tightly, but you will need to loosen up a little bit as the blinds will kill you.

Too many players jump into an MTT and think they should go all-in on their first marginal hand in hopes of getting some chips. This strategy is horrible though because almost everyone is looking to double up in the early stages. There are plenty of all-in moves and you don’t want to get unlucky on a bad beat this early. You should sit in the bushes until the all-in action dies down and then slowly increase your chip stack as the cards come.

If you become short stacked you’ll need to change your game and start becoming like all the loose players and going all-in. The blinds will eat you once they rise if you don’t so there is no reason not to try getting lucky and doubling up once you’ve become short stacked.