Overall Adjustments. “Just tighten up,” Paur begins when addressing how to adjust from full. Getting through the Beginning, Middle & Late Stages. All poker tournaments have a. Here is a basic strategy for playing in No-Limit Hold'em tournaments. I originally wrote this as an essay for rec.gambling.poker, in response to a frequently asked question. Some time later, I was told that about two-thirds of the players in a large r.g.p. Tournament (L.A.R.G.E., the Los Angeles Rec.Gambling Excursion/Extravaganza) had printed.

In the first article I ever wrote, I introduced “L” — the amount of chips required to play a hand of limit poker from start to finish — and claimed it would be a pivotal tool in tournament stack management.

Now we move on to the fun stuff — strategy in specific games, starting with limit hold’em. Many of the ideas here apply to other games as well, but I begin here as it has the fewest variables to analyze. In limit hold’em, L is 3.5 big bets, or seven big blinds.

In somewhat backwards fashion, I’m waiting until next time to discuss more general limit hold’em tournament concepts. Today, I want to write about avoiding variance deep in tournaments. Variance can be a vague word, so for this article, I would define it as “bets and raises with little edge and no fold equity, especially when for a significant portion of your stack.”

When to Minimize Variance

This is why aggressive play is the correct strategy in poker tournaments. When you then consider again that aggression is important in no limit poker, you can start to see why aggression is the focal point of your strategy in no limit poker tournaments. The Playing Chicken with a Chicken Strategy.

The two most crucial points to minimize variance are on the bubble and at the final table. It’s also relevant to a lesser degree as the bubble approaches and shortly after it bursts. These are where the pay jumps are the largest, so coin flips are the most painful.

In addition to what stage of the tournament it is, it’s also pivotal to consider how many L you have. In no-limit hold’em tournaments, you are concerned with relative stack size — your stack compared to others at the table. Even with above average chips, it is unprofitable to get in marginal confrontations when covered. In limit hold’em tournaments, what matters is actual stack size. With more than five L, it’s not dangerous to battle a big stack, as losing a hand will only cost one of those Ls.

How to Minimize Variance

Fold the bottom of your open-raising range.

When I am looking to negate variance, I open fold minimally profitable hands such as A-7 offsuit in the hijack or K-9 suited in early position. Raising a hand returning one percent return on investment (ROI) in chips loses money because of the fluctuation undertaken to squeeze it out.

This is a basic tournament idea, but deserves emphasis in limit hold’em because of the game’s structure. In no-limit hold’em, a preflop raise is a low cost way to acquire chips; you can elect to fold to a three-bet. In limit hold’em, because of the immense odds you are getting, you must see a flop, often have to peel it, and sometimes have to make turn and river calls. If we consider limit and no-limit hold’em hands having the same return, the limit hold’em one is exposed to extra variance.

For these reasons, when evaluating marginal situations in a tournament, my friends and I often refer to the Brenden Taylor rule of limit poker, named after the 2010 World Series of Poker limit hold’em bracelet winner — “It’s OK to fold preflop, it’s not OK to fold postflop.”

If opponents notice tight play, they may make an attempt to raise lighter through you, especially on your big blind. Therefore, your three-betting and blind defense ranges have to account for this. If opponents are playing particularly savage, you may end up playing even looser than your normal standards, despite not wanting to gamble. These considerations mean you still have “play poker,” but be aware that opening a hand with a small win rate is not profitable.

Don’t Bet Without Fold Equity

Several years ago, the limit hold’em landscape changed. Players stopped reraising when their range was too small, such as when facing a three-bet as a preflop raiser. The primary reason was for balance. With so few hands which could be reraised for value, it was superior to call everything and be more difficult to read postflop.

In tournaments, this serves an additional purpose — minimizing the percentage of your stack at risk. Since opponents never fold for another bet in limit, a raise increases the amount you have riding on a hand. This increased gamble dwarfs the additional equity that could be eeked out of an extra bet. Calling also creates smaller pots postflop, incentivizing all players to bluff and call down less. The smaller the pot is, the less it is worth fighting over, leading to reduced stack fluctuation for everyone involved.

An Example from my 2013 World Series of Poker

I applied these principles during three days of battle at the $5,000 WSOP limit hold’em event this year. With 18 players cashing, I had an above average stack with almost seven L (116,000 at 2,500-5,000 blinds) with 27 remaining. I proceeded to lose six sizeable pots, but saved a bet on four of them, leaving me the shortest stack, but not eliminated on the bubble.

Once in the money, I navigated my way to the final table despite never having more than seven L. My tools were conservative preflop folds, bluffs to capitalize on a tight image, and some all-in luck. The most notable fold was passing on A-Q offsuit versus an under-the-gun raise on the hand which eliminated Steve Landfish in tenth place, and punched my ticket to the final table. There, I was seated to the right of Domenico de Notaristefani, a loose, tough player who entered among the leaders in chips.

I estimated he would not fold more than ten percent of his big blinds if I raised the small blind and would not be surprised if he was never folding. As such, I was completing small blinds instead of raising. If he was never folding, I was unnecessarily risking a small bet and inflating the pot by two small bets, a one hundred percent increase that I’d be forced to zealously fight over.

There are certainly tradeoffs to this strategy. I am not getting value from my strong hands, whereas Notaristefani still has the option to do so. Also, the times my opponent would have folded, my limp allows him to play a free hand I could’ve picked up for free.

Negating variance does not always result in taking a conservative line. When opponents fold, there is zero variance, you take down what is in the pot. If your opponent is capable of folding, it is better to raise, both for value and to avoid the variance that comes when the opponent would have gotten a free look.

My tournament run ended in seventh place for $31,264. The last leg of the tournament was utterly an exercise in limit hold’em stack management. I never had more than ten times starting stack, so felt fortunate to not only cash, but sneak into my second WSOP final table. I hadn’t been in the Thunderdome for two years — it was good to be back.

I’ve written about avoiding variance as a shortstack. Now I’d like to cover a variety of nuances on a broader scale.

Limit Holdem Tournaments Versus Cash Games

Structurally, limit holdem tournaments are very similar to their cash-game sisters. The only notable differences are nothing being raked out of the pot (applies to all tournaments) and the small blind not always being half of the big blind because of level increases. In most live tournaments, there will be levels in which the small blind will be between one-third and two-thirds of the big blind.

Adjusting for Small Blind Size

Accounting for a different-sized blind is straightforward at first glance. When smaller, you should play tighter, when larger, you should play looser. However, there are subtle differences to consider. In late position, the change is a much larger consideration.

When you raise in early position, how much you win or lose in the long run is based on how your hand interacts with the entire table, resulting in more multiway pots. When you raise in late position, a larger percentage of your winrate is stealing the blinds and navigating heads-up pots where you’ve chopped up the small blind’s dead money two ways. Therefore, it’s not worth altering your range much in early position, but more crucial to adapt as it folds to you towards the button.

It’s also worth considering what hands you should become looser or tighter with. This partially depends on the small blind itself. If she adjusts by three-betting more, I add hands with showdown value to my range to prepare for heads-up confrontations. If she tends to call, I would rather increase my hand density with high implied-odds holdings such as suited connectors. Open-raising hands such as A-3 offsuit from the cutoff is much less attractive when the pot is frequently going to be three-handed.

When You Are the Small Blind

When the small blind is smaller, the obvious adjustment is to play tighter. When it is bigger, you should likewise play looser, but should that be via calling or reraising more? Many players adapt by flatting, even though they typically utilize a three-bet or fold strategy in other scenarios.

I prefer to widen my three-betting range and never call. I don’t think its horrendous to cold-call, but the immense odds I’m offering the big blind and how unbalanced my range would be make me cringe. It would be difficult to construct calling and reraising ranges which both have a variety of hands, so I avoid that problem by three-betting everything. There are situations that make calling more palatable, such as if there is a weak player in the big blind or if you heavily need to avoid variance. However, even in these situations, it’s worth considering the free information you are presenting to your opponents as the flop comes.

Play In Limit Holdem Tournaments

No Limit Hold'em Tournament Strategy

The most defining characteristic of limit hold’em tournaments is that players are much tighter than their cash-game selves. As levels increase, players become increasingly concerned with survival, making the money, pay jumps, and their final table prospects.
Unlike no-limit, or the stud games, there are no antes, so there are less incentives to contend for each pot. This results in more correct play, as rounders tend to be too loose in limit hold’em cash games, without amazing postflop skills to justify it. As professional Jimmy Fricke deduces, “while in no-limit hold’em tournaments, you are rewarded for your opponents playing either too tight or too loose, in limit hold’em tournaments, you’d just prefer them playing too loose.”

Bluff More, Value-Bet Less

Despite playing better, these adjustments leave themselves susceptible to other plays. The best ways to counter a weak-tight strategy are to bluff more and value-bet less. However, being selective improves this strategy — specifically, tight players are more likely to miss low and middle-card flops, which are excellent candidates to attack.

Texas Hold'em

Here is an example of a strong bluff made better by a stressful tournament atmosphere:
A player raises in the lojack (seat acting before the hijack) and we defend Q J in the big blind. The flop comes 8 7 5 and we check-raise their continuation bet, planning on betting most turns. When we don’t turn a good bluff card like a four, six, nine, or ten, we often pick up a pair or backdoor-straight and/or flush draw, buffering our equity and minimizing the punishment for shoveling money in as an underdog.

This type of bluff can be attempted in a cash game, but shines here. In the pressure cooker that is a tournament, a tight opponent is likely to have big cards which miss this flop, having folded hands such as A-8 preflop. Even when they connect with the flop, they are also more likely to fold scary turn cards with hands such as A-7 suited, in the name of stack preservation.

Even though thin value-bets are a key weapon in the arsenal of expert limit hold’em players, they are less effective when the game is played as a tournament. Hands that would normally be a river value-bet, such as third pair, become value-cuts when opponents have defaulted to check/calling instead of betting themselves.

Adjusting Your Starting Hands

The implementation of these tactics is improved if we alter our preflop range. By planning to make fewer value-bets and more bluffs, showdown value is less of an asset and lack of showdown value less of a liability. The result is that suited connectors show improved play while showdown based holdings such as A-x are worse.

The chart below illustrates some reasonable additions and subtractions from a standard opening range, using the cutoff as an example. We remove some A-x and mediocre king hands while boosting our number of suited holdings.

Know When This Doesn’t Apply

These suggestions are generalizations. I’ve certainly played in tournaments where the advice here is worse than useless. For instance, some players are tight preflop and resolve never to fold postflop — trying to bluff them is counterproductive. Even though I have diagnosed their playing style correctly, the remedies prescribed in this article would be poisonous. No matter what strategies you come into a tournament with, it’s ultimately crucial to stay focused on the hands in front of you and play poker. ♠

Ben Yu attended Stanford University but knew even before finishing that he wanted to embark on a journey to become a one of the finest professional mixed-game players. He made his debut onto the tournament scene in 2010 with a second-place finish in the World Series of Poker $1,500 limit hold’em shootout and followed it up in 2011 by leading the WSOP with seven cashes across six different games. In 2012, he moved to Rosarito, Mexico in order to continue playing online and was enthralled to perform well at the World Championship of Online Poker, including a final table appearance at the $10,300 poker 8-Game High Roller, and a cash in the main event.

In this article we are going to take a look at an introduction to No Limit Holdem Strategy.

Texas Holdem has quickly become the most played game all over the world.

No Limit

Even more so, No Limit Texas Holdem has become the game of choice by the majority of poker players and is the game that you will most likely be seen being played in any casino poker room.

Since the game has become so popular knowing some basic Holdem Poker tips will help you to really stand above a lot of other players and help you to win on a more regular basis.

As an introduction to No Limit Texas Holdem Poker strategy here are 3 tips which should form the foundation of your poker strategy.

Tip 1 – Play Tight

This is one of the most basic no limit Texas Holdem tips and the first advice that we give to all new poker players.

Texas Holdem has become popular rather quickly and since all of the big tournaments have recently been televised there is a whole generation of poker players who watch poker on TV and think that they know how to play correctly when in fact they couldn’t be more wrong.

All that these players see on TV are the big “all in” hands and big bluffs – basically they see all the hands with drama in which are good for TV. The TV stations don’t show all of the hands that each player folds because they are focusing on all of the big hands around the tournament, all the “normal” hands get cut and left on the editing room floor.

New players see this and have the perception that every hand they play in should be played in the manner that they have seen on TV, not realising that in between these hands are many hands that are uneventful and just folded without any drama.

So what this leads to at the lower stakes tables, which are full of new players, is a tendency to overplay their hands, place big bets, attempt many bluffs and call bets when they shouldn’t.

The first rule of good strategy then has got to be one that takes advantage of these bad plays… so how do we do that?

We do this by adapting our style to play a tight Texas Holdem strategy, only playing good hands and making sure that when we enter a pot and play a hand then we are in a strong position and ready to punish the bad plays of the beginners.

By doing this you are catching these players in their bluffs and having better hands than they do at showdown because you are playing a tighter and stronger range of hands.

These players are prone to thinking that big bets will win the pot very frequently and are not aware of their table image. By identifying these players and playing your strong hands against them you will soon emerge victorious and be collecting their chips in front of you at the table.

Tip 2 – Be Aggressive

Another type of player that you will commonly see a lot is the “loose passive” player. These players play a lot of hands (the “loose”) but are quite weak and easily pushed off the hand (the “passive”).

They don’t like to fold before the flop as they want to see if they can make a hand and when they do they want to get to showdown as cheap as possible to see if they have won.

It is simple maths and probability that by playing so many hands they can’t connect with the flop all the time, in fact we can go so far as to say that they will miss the flop and not make a hand the majority of the time.

By being aggressive against these players you punish them for playing so many hands and calling so lightly. These players are very good to build your bankroll against with a tight aggressive style.

You should be betting often against these types of players even if you have not made a hand to take advantage of the fact that they will most likely fold the majority of the times that they don’t make a hand either.

This leads us to a new poker term, fold equity, which is one of the most important reasons to be aggressive and is an essential addition to your no limit Texas Holdem strategy.

Fold Equity

When you are playing poker you do not have to have the best hand to win. You can also win the pot by making your opponent fold.

By being the aggressor, or the one who is betting and raising, you are giving yourself a second chance of winning the pot by making your opponent fold.

No Limit Hold'em Online

This additional value increases your chances of winning the pot when making a bet and is called the “fold equity”

For example, lets say you have a strong but easily beatable hand and you think it is 50/50 that your opponent holds a better hand. So your chances here are 50% to win the hand. If you make a bet then you think there is a 50% chance that your opponent will fold as his hand is not that strong either.

• You now have a 50% chance you opponent will fold and you win the pot +50%
• Even if he does call you will win 50% of the time with a better hand +25% (50%x50%)
• So your overall chance of winning the hand is 75% if you make a bet vs 50% if you do not bet.

By sticking to this tight aggressive style and paying attention to what types of players your opponents are you will be able to greatly improve your game by not only ensuring you are playing good poker, but also taking advantage of the style of play of you opponents and optimising your play to counter it.

Tip 3 – No Limit Holdem Bankroll

Another essential basis of any No Limit Holdem Strategy is to protect your bankroll. Just like any other finances you should monitor and manage your bankroll to ensure that you are playing at the correct stake levels.

Poker is a game of skill, but it is also based on probability like any card game, and you are always reliant on the draw of the cards.

Good poker players understand the probability and odds of the cards they need arriving but no matter how well you play and how much your strategy is designed to maximise the odds in your favour there is a chance that the smaller odds will hit and you will lose.

In the long term this is not a problem, because if you play correctly and with the odds in your favour then the laws of probability dictate that over the long term you will come out on top.

So as part of a good strategy we must protect ourselves against the short term fluctuations of the lessor odds hitting and beating us. This is often called “variance” in poker.

We also need to protect against us having an off day and playing badly in a poker session, making incorrect decisions – there are all sorts of reasons this may happen, tiredness, illness, distractions.

To provide this protection we establish bankroll management rules which say that we only sit down at a table with a small percentage of our total bankroll. This way if you have a losing session then you have plenty of further buy-ins with which to play another time and recover those losses.

The normal rule for No Limit bankroll management is to maintain 20 buy ins and only risk 5% of your total bankroll at any single table. A normal buy in for a table is 100 big blinds, so that would represent about 2,000 big blinds. As your bankroll grows, you can play higher stakes, if it shrinks then you may have to drop to lower stakes until it recovers.

This level of protection is required due to the volatile nature of No Limit and the potential to lose your whole buy in very quickly if it all goes wrong.

Making sure that you obey these strict set of rules is very important and the first rule of good strategy that you must learn. You can read more about bankroll management in our introduction article.

Summary

The above tips are by no means meant to be a complete strategy, they are just some introductory notes that you should understand before you start to develop a No Limit Texas Holdem Strategy.

If you would really like to improve your Texas Holdem strategy then we highly recommend the free Winning Poker Strategy Guide over on Poker Professor. This is a complete strategy course that will teach you multiple ways to improve your strategy. It will also walk you through turning $25 into $1,000 by the end of the course.

• Trust & Security

  I'll only recommend Safe & Trusted sites with a proven track record

• By Game Type

  Different rooms are better for different game types & stakes

• Beginner Friendly

  I'll find you a site with players of a similar skill level

• Promotions

  I'll find you the best value Promotions, Bonus & Freebies!

[nrelate-related]