TOURNAMENT PHASES

The strategy to follow at a poker tournament would depend on the type of competition. For instance, in a “re buy” tournament, players can allow themselves to play more loosely, because the blinds are not too high and also because they will have a chance to buy more chips.

However, even though a player has to adapt its strategy to each tournament, as a general rule there are a few tips that are always valid:

-Beginning of the tournament: During the preflop players can play more loose and take part in a lot of poker hands, but during the post flop, it is convenient to be more conservative and play tighter.

-Middle tournament: As the blinds are now higher, if the player is in an early position it can open the bet aggressively if he has a good hand, otherwise it would be recommended to play more conservative and taking part exclusively in the hands where he has good cards.

-Late phase: It will all depends on the number of chips accumulated. If a player has a good amount, he should play aggressively trying to eliminate the opponents. On the other hand, if he doesn’t have too much stack, he had better play conservative taking part only in those poker hands where he has a real chance to increase his number of chips.