The best tourneyt strategey you play by, can offer, or have heard:
a. Don't be a hero, tournaments are about longevity. Most tournaments only pay out the top 10, so stay prison shower butthole tight, and when you do get in a pot, raise it like your hands to heaven. The same way you will when you're raking your chips in.
b. bring some food, and something to drink with you. like i said tournaments are about longevity, so be prepared to stay a while. Try to get a good nights rest before, and a shower in the morning. Those are two things i never do, but i suppose im just used to it by now.
c. keep one of your eyes on the clock at all times, blinds go up fast in tournaments, so make sure you're taking down at least one nice pot before every blind step-up
d. rebuys and add ons, do some math with these. if the total of the buyin+rebuy(s)+addon doesnt equal what 10th place payout is, it's probably not worth it. do the math, if you're getting short stacked, and the deadline to rebuy or addon is coming up, take a look around the room, see how many players are left, if you're feeling good still, still got your wits, arent too hungry or tired or upset, and can maintain, and have a chance to take home some money, by all means, take advantage if they offer it.
e. This is, in my opinon, the most important one.
Tournaments are about three things, in ascending order. The quality of cards, your stack, and most importantly RESPECT. I'm a younger guy (22) and when i saunter into a tournament, most of the players think i'm some newbie that just saw a WPT on TV and decided to try and buy in.
Which i must say, for the first few tables of a tournament works to my advantage. No one thinks i know what im doing, so for the first part of the tournament when i'm raising nuts, people try to go over the top on me to scare me away.
They learn quickly, but the first few tables of a tournament i have to play super tight to earn respect. As the tournament progresses, and some punk kid half everyones age is the chip leader, i can start to make some moves at pots. For instance, i was at a table last weekend for about 45 minutes, i had played four hands, pocket queens, ace jack suited, pocket tens and ace ten suited. I showed down each of these hands, and won all of them. I was the chip leader at the first break at 3300, around the table was average at 800-1000. When we came back from the break, blinds went to 100/200 and i wasin early position with 10 5 offsuit. I decided to test my reuptation because the four guys to my left were the prodominant shit talkers throughout the day, so i raised, double the blinds. The guy to my left, the leader of the shit talkers looked at me, looked to my stack, looked to his, checked his cards again and mucked it. Everyone else did too, i picked up barely anything for doing that, but my point was made. The guy to my left leaned in and softly asked me if laying down pocket jacks was a good call, i nodded and posted my big blind.
WIthout respect, it's incredibly difficult to make a move at pots when you don't have it, and even harder to bet at pots when you've got something. Say you've got mid pair, and you make a decent sized raise, 3/4 x BB, and someone goes over the top of you just to try and push you around. You can't really risk that your mid pair is gonna stand up. But if everyone knew you only held onto the nuts, they'd think twice about putting theyre stack in danger to try to take your "dead money".
So play tight, and agressive. I hate to quote rounders and sound like even more of a newbie, but if its worth calling, be in there raising. Sooner than you realize, you'll have enough respect to buy pots off them.
like i said, all of this advice is pretty basic, but it's seemed to work for me so far.
p.s. i only took 5th in the tournament i was talking about. Blinds kept coming up and i couldnt catch a hand to even make a move with. Finally on a 4,000 BB, i had to go all in on J Q offsuit (the closest thing to a hand i had had at the final table) everyone folded, and my friend who was sitting across from me called with A 2 offsuit and caught an ace on the flop. I had a lot of fun, and my friend ended up winning and buying lunch so i wasn't very mad. But had he folded i think he would have been in a bit of trouble.
I second that advice to play tight and earn respect. About 2 months ago, I started playing tournaments and was playing mediocre hands such as J8o and getting my butt kicked. Then, I started to only play hands where both cards were above 9's, throwing away any lower pocket pairs. I placed 5th in that tournament. Next tournament, I tied for 1st after we split the pool. Then I got the notion of trying to bluff at a few pots, and have had an extremely bad week. If you've got it, bet it. If you're chasing, fold.
