This three-part strategy series comes from a post I put up on the PKR forum which proved to be very popular in my pre-sponsorship days. It’s a basic outline of my MTT strategy that I wrote after a couple of players asked me to give them some pointers. It might not be everyone’s optimal way of being successful at the tournament tables, as it’s just my opinion, but if it helps you that’s great!
Avoid early headaches
In the early stages of a tournament I try really hard not to get too involved with marginal hands from early position, such as any pair lower than 8-8 or any hand like A-J or less. I’ll happily fold all of these attractive looking holdings from the first three positions (at a ten-handed table anyway). My theory on this is the same as a lot of people in the know and that is if you are raising in early position with these ‘marginal hands’ and you get a call or reraise then the likelihood is you are almost certainly behind! I’ve found that in the long-term playing these kinds of hands will lose you more money than it can potentially win for you. And of course you invariably have to play the whole hand out of position which isn’t great.
Avoid giving yourself difficult decisions unnecessarily. You start a tournament relatively deep-stacked, so donking off half your stack with a dominated Ace isn’t the best way to start your long climb towards the final table.
In middle position and late position in the first 5-6 levels of a tournament I don’t see a great deal of point in raising to steal blinds with weak hands. If you do, the other players will eventually stop respecting your raises, which could be disastrous if you go card-dead later in the tournament and are forced to steal lots of blinds. I’d recommend restricting your raising range in middle and late positions to suited connectors, any pair and solid non-paired hands, i.e. A-K, A-Q, A-J, A-T, K-Q, K-J, Q-J.
Read part II