with what hands do we start playing a tournament?

[martina pinto]

all at the beginning of a tournament .. we have the habit of waiting for hands .. in my case I expect high hands like AK AA AQ QQ and among others .. how do we play them? as they believe that it is the best way at the beginning of a tournament to play these hands to get the most out of them and be able to keep the right foot forward.

 

[sryulaw]

look for the fact that you have more blins, you have 90bb, this makes you open range of call, and open raise, but if you control, not everything is flowers, I would tell you to enter the plays in which you have few players with you , defend the BB, small, and big, cards from 9. 8s, 88, 77, A2s, have your values pay to open a flop. When you have an effective stack, it is good to adjust your range so that you are at the front when you enter the game.

 

[Comdemn]

all at the beginning of a tournament .. we have the habit of waiting for hands .. in my case I expect high hands like AK AA AQ QQ and among others .. how do we play them? as they believe that it is the best way at the beginning of a tournament to play these hands to get the most out of them and be able to keep the right foot forward.

Hello! At the initial stages of the tournaments you need to play tight-aggressive, play from the position and try to steal the blinds. But it all depends on the game of your opponents, on the structure of the tournament in which you play, on the number of participants and so on. Play by the circumstances: if your opponents are playing tightly, try to steal their blinds, because they will fold more often to your raises. If at your table often someone from your opponents or several of them go all in - you should narrow your range and play with strong hands from the position. I adhere to the tight-aggressive strategy of the game in the initial stages of tournaments, but often I can open draw-hands like Q10o, J9o, and also low pairs (33, 44)from middle position if my stack exceeds 50-100 BBB and my opponents tend to wait only strong hands, because I can throw off such hands if I see a big raise from the opponent. You should also pay attention to the size of the raises and the position of your opponents-they can tell you about the strength of their hands. If your opponents like to do limp, then you should punish them and often raise them yourself, especially when you are on the SB BB or, the button. Always act from the situation and show creativity: change the size of your stacks, use time-banking, try to participate more often in distributions where large banks with a wider range of hands are collected than usual. You need to learn how to adjust
to each specific situation and try to squeeze out of it a maximum. Experiment at every stage of the tournament and go beyond the templates described in the literature! Good luck!

 

[kapobar]

In beginning of tournament u don't need to wait only good cards,u can exit early that.
U not need to steal blinds early , what the point of that,u do that much later.
I like small pairs and 78s 910s ...

 

[PKRNRS]

I personally look for more spots to work with and play more marginal hands. If you make a mistake then it's not quite as bad than if you make a bad play later. The blinds are lower so the pots won are not as valuable as in later stages, especially when antes kick in. You should be looking to stack some of the looser bad players early on. Because if someone else gets those chips and is good then I'm the later stages you'll have a harder time getting them away from a good player vs a bad player.

 

[sid kendell]

You can call and raise with a lot of implied odds hands in the beginning such as suited one and two gappers,suited A's,suited broadways and pairs.Don't hold on to the big pairs postflop in a multiway pot with a lot of action.Top pair has more value at 30bb than 100bb.

 

[milka1605]

At an early stage of the game there is no need to use only very strong cards. While the small blinds should use this moment to increase the stack.

 

[christosa197]

My personal view - one can start a tournament with any other card in the hands of -
the most important is to avoid - all in!

 

[gabethegimp]

As a MTT Live / Online player - don't play many cash games or anything like that I feel like I have a few little bits I can share. Wall of text, mybad. Also I know you were just asking for starting hands, I'm bored and thought I would dump a bit here to help other than just "play these." It doesn't teach anything. If your more experienced that the stuff I'm going to post, sorry, hopefully it helps somebody at some stage. If not, sorry again. God I'm sounding Canadian. xD Also - I'm not giving "direct information" more advice that you can google and research to find out more, sometimes going down that google rabbit hole looking for answers gives you some solid little tricks or insights you wouldn't have found otherwise if people just gave you an answer straight up.

In no particular order:

1 - Pay attention to whats happening
You'll see a lot of people, sit at a lot of tables (most of the time) and you need to figure out what type of players you have at the table. Support software will help you with this if you play online. Live is a bit different, but if you generally just play locally you're going to see the same faces around. You can pick up on betting patterns online: when player x is holding something strong do they always raise 3 x big blind in position but only 2.25 early? What about player y, do they always limp with monsters and runs the clock down to zero before checking/calling? Does player z use the 1/4, 1/2 pot buttons when bluffing but manually add value bets? Use the notes system and support software. It'll help.

2 - Don't limp
If you're going into a pot, you should be willing to raise/call a raise with what you have in your hand. Limping is a good way to conceal a monster however, every player in the pot potentially decreases your equity thus you're chance to be out flopped or drawn out - plus with a monster you want their chips in the middle, not behind the line. The only time you should be limping is for a sneaky play where you have a read on somebody and you know they'll pay you off or you have a marginal with decent odds for a call in position and the chips to spare. But remember, you need to know when you're beat, even pre-flop. This is one of the reasons position and understand players ranges in those positions is so important.

3 - Don't just shove all-in just because of High Pairs or High Connectors.
Suck out central and it's basically asking anybody that knows anything about theory to start sprinkling fish food in front of themselves so your chips head their way.

See a flop without pot-committing yourself. If you have position, raise/re-raise. If you don't and it's already raised, just call and conceal, if it's not, raise if you should. Use your common sense and at least see three and evaluate where you stand. A/A is busted out all the time on the flop but if you see it first, you can get away from it if it's horrible for you. Caveat: If you're really short stacked late ( <10-15bb ) and you want to play the hand, shove. Either way you're committed.

4 - Play your position with a range of hands for that position then play it aggressively.
This may sound counter intuitive considering what I stated in number 3, but there is a difference between aggressive and reckless. A 2.25-3 raise is generally enough to get the point across that you potentially have something. Early stages you can goto 5-7 but rarely, late position and only with monsters because you're basically committing yourself to the river. This goes the other players too. Watch them and figure out their ranges and exploit it.

Figure out your comfortable and playable ranges in all seats on the table. Tight early with only good pairs and high suited connectors. Mid you can add some high/mid range connectors you wouldn't play early and late you can play possible gutshot straights and alike - but keep them to a minimum if possible.

5 - Figure out the math & theory.
Understanding the underlying theory and levels of poker take years to completely understand and are constantly changing, however, the fundamentals are always constant and vital to profitable play. Research it, understand pot odds, equity, implied odds, reverse implied odds, what makes a call or raise profitable, effective stack sizes and how to size your bets. Just because you have a A/Jo, doesn't mean its playable... and if you played it, profitable, even in position.

Then move onto some of the more advanced stuff like levels of thinking like exploitative play vs GTO for example.

6 - When you think you have the best hand, check again.
Don't just assume your set of 6's on a paired board is the best hand out there. There are flushes, full-houses, straights that can all beat you on a nasty flop/turn. Think about it, is there something that could be hidden that you're not seeing? What's his position? What's his range in that position? How has he played from that position in past hands? He just donk bet into me, why? Why did he just check - am I being trapped? You could be beat and not know it because you're playing your hand, not the table or the player.

7 - Understand in MTT's, you're going to bust more than you win so play without fear.
MTTs are tornys. You're going to bust out in all stages of it at some point or another - sometimes even on the first hand. So much so that most of the time you'll likely struggle to the bubble.

Generally MTT players win one and a lot of cash (relative to the buy-in) then lose many after before their next big cash. Some constantly make the money, but only just and have a little bit of profit to go along with their BI. Some live players I regular with have never made the money and most of the time, no fault of their own. It's just a reality of MTT play. Get used to being sucked out on the river, thinking you're in front only to be surprised by a hand you didn't think they had. Missing a concealed hand because you just missed it on the board and even just something as simple as you made a mistake and it cost you everything. It happens. There is something to learn from every lost hand and every failed play.

Also - Look out for players that govern their choices based on feelings instead of informed choices. A lot of them play live and look at you and make a call into a semi-bluff thinking you got nothing then out draw you on the river. Even though their equity was less than 2% and by all logical reasoning they shouldn't have been in the pot in the first place, let alone at the turn, there are people that can, do and will play by feel - it's exploitable, but only if you spot it early, otherwise it's more likely to bite you on the ass.

Go for first place, not the bubble. You won't make it final table without some coinflip plays, all-ins and risks but it's about choosing the right times to do it. Poker is about making the right choice at the right time.

Getting tired now so that'll do.

Most of all, be kind to yourself when you make mistakes. Enjoy the game as it is just a game. If you don't enjoy it, feel yourself getting frustrated, drawing dead all the time even when you played well, just walk away for a bit. Do something else. Come back fresh and ready to play to win.

Night all

 

[louaylouay]

Let me open this with the fact that I am by no means a professional poker player. I don't even think I'm good. I am currently in profit playing MTT with about a 300% ROI, but I play micros and I have only played about 100-120 tournaments, I can expect a huge amount of that ROI to be variance and good runs.The way I play puts me a lower % ITM but a higher % at the final table. I am like 80% to the final table when ITM, and i think 11 or 12% ITM overall.

I disagree with a lot of the posts here, just based on how I play. I understand that having more blinds makes people want to play more hands. The problem is, the risk vs reward early is very, very, very high. Even if you double, triple, or even quadruple up early, it does not mean anything. That quadruple starting stack is like 2bb at the final table. In order to do so, you will have to be taking some risk. Your risk is either to double/triple/quad up (which, in the long run is basically unimportant) or get sent to the rails. I personally pick my spots WAY tighter early and open up as the tournament progresses. I can give you my reasons why:


1) As I said before, early in the tournament, you do not have to double up. If someone doubles up on the first hand, great. Those players are no more likely to make the final table than any other player though. You can double up 3 times in the first hour.. All I have to do is double up once between the 3rd and 4th hour to be way ahead of that stack you have, why take a rail risk 3 times when you can do it once?
For this reason, in my opinion, it is much more advantageous to try and extract decent value out of strong hands than to donate 1BB per somewhat playable hand to the pot, hoping to hit a monster by the river. Or, even worse, raise 2,3,4,5x BB and get called by a person who, like a lot of previous posters, decide that they have enough chips to take a chance on the flop. Get 3 or 4 people to have this mindset at the table (which a lot do as seen above) and your raises are useless. Now you are playing every single flop with 3-4 people in the hand. No matter your cards those are bad odds. Then you will shove with anything TT+ or Ax or JT because you are tired of people drawing out on you and want to isolate now that you finally have a good hand. Too bad, everyone knows you raise wide as hell, you're getting called by 2 people. AA vs 2 people is only like 70% to win. You want to put your tourney life on the line with the best hand youll ever get, with a relatively insignificant payoff, and only have 70%?


2) Once antes come in and the tournament has ran for a while, stealing the blinds are worth way more than they would have been early, and I am playing with a SUPER tight image. I could have went all-in in the first few levels to increase by, say, 3,000 chips. Now that blinds are 250/500 with a 25 ante, every blind I steal is 950 chips including antes. I need to steal 3 blinds in order to have "caught up" to someone that doubled up early. With my tight image, that is super easy to do. Along with this, I am getting that result without EVER risking all of my chips.


3) Especially at microstakes, people are wild sometimes. Did you ever realize that if there is a 500 person tournament, the first 300 will be out within an hr or so but the final 100 people can take twice as long as that, sometimes more? You don't know enough about your opponents to make good decisions, which is why so many people make bad decisions early in a tournament. Let the wide players play against the wide players. I love seeing someone shove with completely nothing and quad up their chips. I know those will be mine eventually. Just let the people who wanna gamble gamble, and play your game when it's time to.


Just my 2 cents.



EDIT: Just read Gabethegimps reply. That is very good information on how to play wider if that's your style. I will agree with him on that is how to play wide if you want, I just think my playstyle is different I don't have much to input on that situation.

 

[gabethegimp]

We're just two different styles in the same game - it's what makes poker great.