Otago Wines

A poker tournament can be best broken down into many stages (early, middle, late, bubble, and endgame).  While the goal of competing in a poker tournament is to win, a sophisticated poker player looks at each of the tournament stages as a leg of a race.  Each leg of the poker tournament race requires a different style of play, as well as different techniques and approaches.  By planning your race, you will stand the best chance in finishing in the money.

Early on in a poker tournament, you want to get most of your chips, not by taking down pots preflop, but instead via post-flop play.  You want to gain the majority of your chips by out flopping and outplaying players.  In the tournament’s early stages, the majority of your chips are going to come from your opposition overplaying hands where you have out-flopped them.

In a perfect tournament, you are going to want to see many flops in the poker tourneys early stages - looking to either release, or outplay.  You will look to extract maximum value most all the time.  You will not want to raise many hands preflop, as you are looking to gain the majority of your profit after the flop.  As a result, you will upsize your value bets to compensate for the value you might have left behind by not raising preflop.

Additionally, you will note there is a great deal loose play post flop.  This makes for the most ideal of conditions to extract money from players after the flop.  Given that you are “playing” post flop, you are taking advantage of such trend.  Additionally, a raise to isolate will often not work early on, because there is enough chips in the average stack in relation to the blinds that make calling “to see a flop” more common.  Furthermore, the more you have raised a pot preflop, the bigger the pot is, and the more difficult it becomes to just plain give up in a hand.

Early on in a poker tournament, the best way to extract value is by allowing players to overplay their hands post flop.  By committing to take many flops cheaply, you will let your opposition just hand over their entire chip stack.  Playing solid post flop poker in early stages of poker tournaments will prepare you to make a run for the winner’s share of the purse in the middle, late and endgame stages of a poker tournament.