Poker Live Tournament Strategy


It’s definitely no longer easy to make big bucks in online poker tournaments as it once was. Fortunately, we still have another option available to us.

Click here to claim your FREE tournament report so you can CRUSH the beginning of tournaments. Poker Tournament Tip 1: Steal a Lot, But Don’t Go Overboard “Open small and often.” This phrase drove the pre-flop strategy of almost every tournament regular for years, and it still has some merit. With antes in play, a 2.25BB open has to pick up the pot less than half of the time to show an immediate profit.

  1. Crush Live Poker. I thought it would be a good time to discuss strategies that you can use to crush live poker. Since cash games are way more straight forward, today we will concentrate on live poker tournaments and how you should prepare for these games to walk away as a winner more often.
  2. Whether you are looking for live poker tips regarding tournament or cash you have reached the right place here on Betfair Poker where you can find strategy, free advice and live poker basics all.
  3. The one strategy which is always in fashion is to play the odds and make sound decisions. When players are ahead most of the time as they bet into the pot, they’re going to be successful poker players. Learn strong and weak poker hands, then learn everything in between. Know the pot odds when you decide to call or, better yet, raise.

In the days that followed Black Friday, all the way back in April 2011, US-based players embarked on a mass exodus to the live arena. Everybody was talking about how soft the games were, but that kind of chat has steadily died off.

Live cash games have definitely gotten tougher, but what about live tournaments?

Live tournaments at the lower limits are still super soft and worth checking out. This is where all the fun players looking for one night’s glory go. The lad’s night out kind of thing.

Serious professionals will be lurking for sure, but unlike the cash tables tournaments will have plenty of people donating EV to your cause. Some of these guys will be treating the event like a video poker session.

Let’s take a look at some tips to get you ready for you first live tournament.

Tight Is Right

The first thing you will likely notice is how different the pre flop ranges can be compared to online

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. You must work out quickly who is what type of player.

Another major red flag that you will see a lot in live games is the prevalence of limpers. While limping is seen as more normal in live tournaments than cash games, it is still a great way to pick up on who the weakest players at your table are.

Stacking off ranges can vary wildly compared to online games, particularly with deep stacks.

Live Casino Poker Tournament Strategy

Be wary of any rocks who will only ever do this with pocket aces or kings, and keep your eye out for recs who clearly have no idea which hands are strong enough to stack off with.

Start Early

Many players think the early stages of a tournament are not important. It is true that the real profit is made from your late stage decisions, but this isn’t the same as agreeing that you can ignore all of the +EV opportunities that come in the early game.

Just think about all of the new players who are playing a live poker tournament for the first time. Do you think they will deliberately avoid playing for the first hour or so? Absolutely not.

Poker Live Tournament Strategy
This is why you must make sure you are in place to take advantage right from the get go.

Abuse Your Fold Equity

When the stacks get to a medium depth, you will be in a prime position to exploit unaware players by jamming all-in over their open raise. Because the stacks are starting to get shallow, the amount of chips you win compared to what you started the hand with make it a great result whenever you can pull this off.

You will notice that players tend to defend their big blind more often in a tournament. For this reason you must pay special attention to who calls wide and who doesn’t adjust.

Players who remain cautious when they should be fighting more are ripe to exploit by opening super wide in late position.

Keep Your Eyes Open

Any advice on crushing live poker tournaments is incomplete without a brief discussion on tells. The ability to read a player by their physical actions is invaluable when it comes to live poker.

The best part of all of this is that recreational players will only be thinking about their “poker face”. All the other tells that can be picked up through glancing and the movement of chips give away so much more.

The classic book Caro’s Book of Poker Tells is well worth a read if you are moving from online to live poker.

Live vs. Online Poker Tournament Strategy

While the game itself is thesame, the strategy of a live tournament is way different than the one of anonline poker tournament. In this article we’ll take a look at some of thesedifferences.

Online MTTs require moreknowledge and abilities, such as being able to calculate pots, odds and equity.While real tournaments require less math, they do need calm and composure, self-controland the ability to read other players.

In online tournaments youhave to take the best decisions based on math and hand equity calculations,while in live poker you can narrow down hand ranges based on the reactions ofother players.

Usually, players in livetournaments are weaker than those who play online at the same buy-in. A fishytournament means more variance, so you need to be careful to not go broke tooearly in live tournaments. You can avoid this by playing tighter than usual andby folding weak hands.

In live poker it’s moreabout getting the most chips out of each player gradually, compared to tightchip wars happening in online tournaments. In live games you will get calledmore often and for worse odds.

Poker Live Tournament Strategy Guide

Bluffing is much more usefulin online tournaments. Because players in live games are more passive and havea weaker strategy, your bluffs will not be as effective. If you really want tobluff in a live game, you have to be sure that your opponent will fold amarginal hand.

Because of the abovementioned passiveness, value betting is much more useful in live tournaments. Soif you have a good hand, play it slowly from the flop in order to get the most chipsfrom others. Just make sure to not be called down by a passive player with abetter hand.

When switching from onlinepoker to live games, make sure to keep these things in mind:

  • Livegames are slower – not only that you can play just one table at a time, butplayers take much longer to make a move. Fewer hands mean a lot more foldingand time spent not being in the game. But you can use this time to study youropponents
  • Livetables are usually softer (at small stakes) – we already discussed about thisabove
  • Livegames are more loose and passive
  • Pre-flopramping is very common and live players want to see the flop
  • Livegames are deeper and you may find yourself in situations of being 200 bb deep

Online games:

  • Arefaster
  • Aretougher
  • Aremore aggressive
  • Havewider hand ranges
  • Aremore about post-flop play

Which games and tournamentsdo you play? Do you prefer live or online poker?

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