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 When to play Loose and when to play Tight in an online poker tournaments.
Correct Poker strategy for online poker tournaments as well as real poker tournaments in a casino is a tight aggressive style as well as being tight in the beginning stages of the tournament and then loosening up as the blinds go up. When this happens depends on your chip stack in ratio to the blinds as well as your chip stack in relation to the average chip stack in the tournament.
As a general rule the best strategy in a tournament is too initially play tight and only play premium hands. This will actually accomplish two things. A lot of people will play loose because the blinds are small so if you hit you are likely going to win with a better hand unless you get unlucky and the hit two pair wit the rag hand. The other is reason to play tight initially is to create e tight table image which will make it easier for you to steal the blinds when they get high enough to actually make it worth stealing. Once the blinds hit 100-400 and you steal you will likely improve you chip stack by a substantial amount. The other idea in playing tight is to not waste your money on marginal hands but to get it in the pot when you have the best possible odds of winning. Online poker tournaments generally have 8 min to 15 min blinds, which seems short but generally you will se more hands then In a real tournament. So take your time and play premium hands like AA, KK, QQ, JJ, 1010, AK, AQ and AJ in goods position. When you do play these hands play them aggressively.
The other consideration happens as the blinds go up. Playing tight is a good strategy in the early stages. This goes for online poker tournaments as well as tournaments in a casino. However this strategy becomes incorrect when blinds get high and your chip stack dwindles. Once you hit about 10 times the blinds its time to make a move when you have position and even with marginal hands like AX and Kx and pocket pair 88 and up. Once you hit 5 times the blinds make a move with any hand like Kx or Ax even Qx or Jx as well as any small pocket pair. Hopefully you will get heads up with someone and get back in the game.
So the idea is to play premium hands in the beginning and when the blinds get high enough try and steal blinds in good position and once you get down to 5 times the blinds you have to be willing to go all in with really marginal hands. If you drop past 5 times the blinds everyone will call and you are dead money even a hand like AA isn’t going to save you most of the time if you have lots of callers. The other problems is if you get to the point where a double up doesn’t even give you enough chips to be competitive you are pretty much done for. You are better off going out in an online poker tournament with a marginal hand while you still have the chips to be competitive and can get heads up wit one caller.
These are the basic ideas behind loose and tight play in an online tournament as well as a live casino tournament. If you have more in depth information on when to play tight and loose in a poker tournament please join our poker forum and post in the poker strategy section of the forum.
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