Every player new to Texas Hold’em should know the rules of the game. However, the rules are not enough. Proper strategy is crucial. Without a good strategy, or with no strategy at all, winning in poker in the long run is impossible.

This fact needs to be emphasized, because even if we are watching people who seem not to be following any steps and who manage to win a few times, it is certain that at some point their chips are going to end up having a different owner.

The basis of poker strategy is chips management – limiting our loss. We can do it by playing only with a few hands. Calling with J3 just because we haven’t had anything better in last 10 hands is unacceptable. Why? If the flop comes J, it is not a guarantee of a comfortable situation, the kicker is to low. And flopping 3 (which happens every 73th time!) doesn’t guarantee that someone will call it.

With which hands should we play then?

How to play in the flop stage?
It has been already mentioned that:
-    We should play only when we have a hand with a strong combination or when we have a chance for drawing to such a combination
-    Call good hands aggressively, don’t draw to weak hands. Without exceptions!
Playing with strong combinations is not limited to waiting for a pair of JJ or higher cards. The ability of skilful drawing to the best possible combinations (the so-called nuts draw) is also very important. Bear in mind that drawing to the best possible combination in flop or turn stage doesn’t guarantee winning in certain situations.

This part focuses on the following issues:
-    Play only in a good mood
-    Don’t get even with other players
-    Avoid spectacular bluffing
Very often we come back home and start playing poker to relax. Playing for relaxation is really pleasant, but it it not helpful in making the right choices. Stress and any other emtions usually put rational thinking on the second place. We are trying to take out all the situations that happenned to us in real life on poker. This makes us more impatient and more likely to ignore serious risk. As a result, we take part in games we shouldn’t take part in. Usually, these are lost deals that, instead of chilling us out, leave us angry and frustrated..

Players new to poker keep thinking about how soon their chips will be doubled, tripled, etc. This happens very often and winning a few thousand chips from the first thousand comes surprisingly quickly. However, there comes a deal or a set of deals when those players lose everything and go from beginners to bankrupts.

Why is it so? Beginners don’t pay much attention to their calls in comparison to the total value of their chips. With 100 000 they call 500/1000 blinds, which means that they go all-in hoping it’s their lucky day. Remember that in poker luck is not so important in the long run, but it can be crucial in shorter periods of time.

Before starting the tournament, we should pay attention to two things:

1.    The awarded places. Only the 1st and the 2nd places give us chips. The 2nd place is 36K in a 20K tournament, 18K in a 10K tournament. Taking out our buy-in from it, it may be said that if we are better than 4 of our opponents we get the double of the buy-in.
The 1st place is 72K in a 20K tournament and 36K in a 10K tournament.
What we win, then, equals to 3.5 worth of the buy-in.
The conclusion here is simple, but still worth emphasizing: the 1st place is what we want!

2.    The blinds’ structure. In tournaments, blinds increase every 3 minutes, which makes it a very fast process at a table with 6 players. This means that every chip is extremely important for us since the very start, and that we should avoid risking without a reason.

Tournament strategy is one of the most complicated matters in poker. First, it should be mentioned that there is no single optimal MTT strategy for tournaments with more than 18 players. It is only possible to point to better or worse solutions, depending on the stage of the tournament.
Tournaments are divided into 3 stages:
-    Early stage
-    Middle stage
-    Late stage
Early stage lasts from the start of the tournament till the moment when  more or less half of the players are out. In this stage, we meet various players. Some of them represent good level of strategic playing, but most of them are weak players.

At the poker table, you meet people of all kinds. Everyone has been brought there because of a different thing. Check out which type of poker player you are playing with or which type describes you best.
Beginner
Beginners are amateurs, brought to the table mostly by a coincidence. The game was there so the amateur decided to join it. Amateurs usually don’t pay attention to many crucial factors. They pick the stakes and the table closest to them. The stack is not important, as long as the money they might  lose is not too big.
They don’t know the rules too well, so very often they end up protesting “I should have won that one, right?!” Beginners play it safe, watching many flops and calling raises.
Their main thought is: don’t raise in pre-flop, because you don’t know what will happen, so it’s better to call  after the flop and at some point you have to  get it right.
Beginners are there for fun and emotions, not so much for the score.
By chance player
Beginners who spent some time playing very often become by chance players. Contrary to  amateurs, by chance players know almost all of the rules. The calls are still not so important to them. After all, they join the game occasionally, looking for entertainment...

How to play a tornado tournament?

Tornado tournaments are really popular on our site.
The guaranteed pot is 13.5 times the buy-in, although in practice, thanks to rebuys, the payout for the awarded places equals to more or less 12-25 buy-ins.
We should remember that because of the structure of such tournaments, they are characterised by quite big swings. We will often lose a lot, but the wins will also be much higher than in traditional tournaments.
Before the tournament starts we should decide on how many rebuys we are going to make. This is, of course, up to individual preferences, however, we would suggest not more than 2 rebuys and one add-on.