10 Mistakes of No Limit Texas Hold’em Tournaments

1- Chip Lead: There are not many people who realize how important it is to protect this. There is no sense getting involved in pots with mediocre holdings, tighten up a bit a play good cards. So often I see the chip leader doubling up smaller stacks with real weak cards. Why? Let them weed themselves out, no need in giving away chips and keeping someone in longer than they need to be.

2- Use Common Sense: No matter how many books you have read or advice you have taken, common sense takes precedent. Good example: if 4 people limp into a pot at PKRPoker and you see if for free from the big blind holding 89o, flop comes AK6 – and every one checks, don’t bluff the turn even if you hit. Someone is slow playing with that many in the pot, no need to loose any chips.

3- Early Position Raises: I was reluctant to put this in but it is useful advice especially as you advance deeper into a tournament. You have to respect someone raising from early position knowing there are several people yet to play behind him/her.

4- Betting into your “Nut” hand: Why do you raise? Must of the time it is to eliminate the field competing against you and increase your chance of winning. What is the goal of a tournament? Accumulate all the chips. So if you hit a nut hand, unbeatable, whether on the flop, turn or river and someone is betting into you…can you think of any reason you want to raise and make him fold?

5- Narrowing the competition: I thought this would be a good follow up to the last point. If you are holding and average hand – low pocket pair lets say. No one has entered the pot before you, no matter your position, raise it to keep the ones behind you from seeing cheap pot and hitting anything against you. 4-5 times the blind is good. Don’t minimum raise! Make someone have to comment some chips to play against you. That way you have a better understanding of what they hold if they do call you.

6- Protect Your Hand: Pay attention to the texture of the flop, if there are potential draws and you have flopped top pair, you want to win the pot right there and not let any one draw out on you cheaply. Bet big and protect your holdings.

7- Think like a winner: It’s a long tournament and you will have to get lucky a couple times to come out on top. You will get beat even though you made the right choice. Make sure you think about each decision and try to make the right choice. Remember, All you can do is get all your money in with the best hand.

8- Small Steps: Your goal with every tournament you enter is to win it. That goes without saying. To set smaller goals to concentrate on during the long session will make it go faster and serve to break up the tournament into mini sessions. Survival is always your first goal, followed by making the money, then the push to the final table and then, of course, the win.

9- Study Your Opponents: This is good to do through out the tournament because even though in the beginning you can be moved around a lot, you may meet an opponent again a few hours later when it counts more. Also open up the final two tables when the tournament gets that far and start to study the bigger stacks, they will be your competition soon enough and might as well try to get as much information as possible before hand.

10- Pay attention to where you are in relation to making the money: The closer the Bodog.com tournament gets to paying out the tighter a lot of people play. Keep that in mind and steal a couple pots from position when you can. Also right after everyone is in the money, most short stacks will go all in with just about any hand so tighten up unless you have a monster.