Single Table Tournaments

Many new poker players are constantly talking about bankroll and how to build one. There are many ways to do this and they all require adjustments in poker strategy in order to be effective. No Limit Texas Hold’em is the most popular form of poker as we can see from all of the televised poker shows. However, considering that it is the most popular you also have a more skilled and knowledgeable player to compete against.

Single Table poker tournaments are one of the fastest ways to grow your bankroll in my opinion. Plus, they don’t take hours and hours to complete. Here are some very easy to follow guidelines for approaching single table poker tournaments.

Hand Selection

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in these kinds of tournaments is to play too loose, especially early in the poker tournament. You want to tighten up early in these kinds of tournaments and pretty much stick to your base fundaments and premium hands in the first three levels or so.

The reason for this is twofold. First, this tournament pays out the top three spots only. That means there are six players that are not going to make it to the money. Second, these kinds of tournaments attract very loose aggressive players that will dump their chips to you if you are patient enough to allow them to do so. Remember, it isn’t your job to knock out every single player in the tournament until you get heads-up. Let the other players knock out a few of the players for you and take all of the risks early on.

Player Types

The player types are ones that you are likely to be familiar with from larger poker tournaments.

• Tight – this kind of player is not going to get involved with speculative hands like [J][9]s or [7][6]s and if they are involved in a pot and raising they probably have a hand.
• Loose – this player plays exactly as the name indicates. Likes to be involved in a lot of pots even when he is out of position and will not fold to standard raises with mediocre hands.
• Flush Chasers – these players will go after the flush draws fervently no matter how early or late in the poker tournament.
• Pair Pushers – these players will get all of their chips in the middle with and pocket pair and will view the raiser or re-raiser as always holding [A][K]

Armed with this knowledge you are much better prepared to counter these styles of play. You can also see why it is wise to play tight early versus getting involved with mediocre hands knowing that the possibility of an all-in pre-flop raise is unusually high in these kinds of tournaments.

Table Strategy

Most single tables start you out with $1500 in chips and blinds of $20/$10 with 10 minute levels. Believe me this is plenty of time to accumulate chips and put yourself in position to make moves once the blinds go up. All it takes is one double up early on and you can then begin to play more speculative hands when in position.

Generally speaking you can play a tight-aggressive style of play early on in attempts to double up your chip stack. Typically, you can hold out until the blinds are $100/$50. At this point any pocket pair from [8][8] – [A][A] is good enough to get your chips in the middle with because once the blinds are that high you are going to be down to around $950 chips or so. You need to be looking for confrontations at this point. Forget about a standard raise if you have not doubled up already.

That means flush draws and in some cases outside straight draws should be on your radar too. Again, these tournaments move fast and the idea is to position yourself so that you have enough chips to take it down or at least land in 3rd place or better. Once the blinds go past $100 no longer have the luxury of playing tight poker.

If ever stealing the blinds were important it is even more magnified a single table poker tournament. You must pick on the smaller stacks as much as your own stack will allow once you have reached level 4 and beyond. You should already know that you are rarely going to get good hands throughout a tournament and the blinds allow you to maintain your stack for the next orbit and beyond depending on how often you steal them.

Lastly, once you are down to 6 players and are in short-handed mode you cannot fold [A][K}! This is not necessarily difficult in an online environment but I have seen it done many times live in satellites.
If you can follow these basic principles you will find yourself in the money more often than not along with solid fundamental play.

By: Curtis Mayfield III

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