Found @ PokerMunch.com

In any poker tournament, no one wants to be the one to burst the bubble, in other words no one ever wants to be the last person to be eliminated before a prize is awarded. Experienced successful tournament players will tell you one of the most important stages in tournament play is the period that the bubble approaches. This is when players start to tighten up, and those players who came to win all of a sudden just came to try and cash. Small stacks are holding on for dear life, and a lot of the times big stack players will just try and ride it out till the bubble has burst.

No where is this more evident than in Sit n Go tournaments. Players at this point have invested a fair amount of time into the tournament, and they do not want to exit without getting at least a little bit of money back. This can work to your advantage, allowing you to take down pots by playing aggressively and not having to showdown your cards. Even though you may play more liberally in this period, you must always be aware of how your opponents are playing, this is probably the single most important factor in winning or losing. It becomes quite apparent which players at the table are fearful of busting out of the tournament before being in the money. Be cautious about just….continue reading article at PokerMunch.com

by Niche Poker
Small pocket pairs can be very profitable starting hands in Texas Holdem poker. However, many people misplay these hands or play them in the wrong circumstances – ending up losing money with them. This article looks at how to play small pocket pairs both before and after the flop in order to maximize your profits.

We start by looking at the reason why small pocket pairs are so valuable – the opportunity to hit a hidden monster hand. Next the circumstances in which small pairs are playable before the flop are covered. Finally we look at how to play small pocket pairs when you miss the flop entirely.

If we define small pocket pairs as 22 through to 66 it is easy to see that you will rarely hit an over-pair to the flop with them. The real value of these hands comes the one in eight times that you flop a set with your small pair. In these circumstances you can win many times your initial bet by taking the entire stack of an opponent, for example if someone holds pocket aces.

The potential for a big reward from a small investment is known as your ‘implied odds’. That is to say the times you hit you will often win a huge pot – this makes up for the times when you miss your hand and need to fold to betting action on the flop.

When playing a hand with implied odds value such as small pocket pairs the critical factor is the size of the bet pre-flop compared to your potential gain. On average you will flop a set once every…. continue reading at Niche Poker

By Todd Brunson, Cardplayer.com
As I mentioned in my last column, I placed 15th in the Doyle Brunson Classic, a WPT event held at Bellagio. Not only would it have been great to win my father’s tournament, but the first prize was $2.5 million! This is one of the biggest tournaments in the world outside the World Series of Poker. I had to settle for a little less than $100,000 as a consolation prize, unfortunately.

This was a great tourney. Jack McClelland started us with 30,000 in chips without starting the limits at 1,000-2,000 right off the bat. We also had 90-minute levels, so there was a lot of play. This was no all-in donkeyfest, which many formerly great events have become.

While I usually advocate an aggressive gambling style in tournaments, this type of tournament requires a more laid-back, selective style. Now, I’m not saying that you should play passively; I’m just saying that you have more time to pick your spots, so you should take it. I laid down more hands in this tournament than I have in the past year, literally.

That’s what this column is about, laying down big hands. It’s tough to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em, especially in a slow-paced tourney like this one.

I usually believe that when faced with a decision in a tournament, you’re always better off erring on the play side (calling or raising) as opposed to the laydown side. You normally don’t have much time, and may never see another big hand again before the antes eat you up.

This is what I hate about contemporary tournament poker. Any idiot who is aggressive enough can win a tournament with minimal poker-playing skill. Ever notice that many of these tournament champs get… continue reading at SwissPoker.ch

by Paul Wasicka
One of the most critical aspects to surviving – and thriving – in deep stack tournaments is learning how to control the size of the pots you play. In short, your goal should be to play big pots when you have big hands and small pots when you don’t. When you and your opponents are deep stacked in a tournament, there are two vital elements to pay attention to when you enter a pot – your opponents’ playing style and the texture of the flop.

Before you commit any chips to the pot, you want to identify the types of players who are likely to be in the hand with you. If you’re at a loose table where your opponents are playing a wide range of hands, you’re going to want to play smaller pots unless you’re sure that you’re way ahead or, preferably, holding the nuts.

Say you’re in a hand with something big like pocket Queens and a player who’s been involved in a lot of pots calls your pre-flop raise. The flop comes J-9-7, and you’re out of position. You need to be very careful about betting here because a loose-aggressive player is going to put you to the test. I’d recommend check-calling or check-raising rather than putting out a continuation bet and giving your opponent a chance to re-raise you or, possibly, flat call with the intention of pushing you off the hand on a later street by making a large bet you can’t call if a scare card falls on the turn or river.

Having position against these types of players makes it much easier for you to control the pot, as you’ll be able to turn the table on them and call or re-raise their initial bets. If they come back over the top, you can…. continue reading at FullTilt

by Allen Cunningham

In poker, image matters.

Throughout a tournament, your table image will help determine how much action you’ll get and, ultimately, how you can manipulate your opponents into making big calls or big laydowns at the wrong times.

While establishing a loose, aggressive image early on can help build your initial chip stack, I believe it’s important to develop a tight table image in the later stages of a tournament because it gives you the ability to maneuver at the times when the chips matter most.

When the action is folded around, some players will always raise from the cutoff and the button. The problem with this play is that’s its predictable and can be easily exploited. If you always raise from the button, the players in the blinds catch on sooner or later and will put in a big re-raise with any two cards. You will also find players just calling you with a much wider range of hands from the blinds before putting in a big check-raise on the flop.

Why do they do this? Because you have been presenting a loose table image by raising any time the action is passed to you. During late-stage play, this image … continue reading at Full Tilt Poker