In this free poker tournaments tips article you’ll learn some handy tactics for knock out poker tournaments. If you are not familiar with these then simply they are just like regular poker tourneys but whenever you eliminate an opponent you get money.
Your basic strategy should be to play big hands very aggressively to try and knock out as many players as you can as fast as possible. The problem appears when a great hand doesn’t come, then it becomes a game of endurance.
Here are 2 examples form my own play of how to play and not to play! One was a 9 players knock out and the other 90 players.
The 9 player game started very well. I played a cautious game initially. My A6 spades got a flush from the flop and after all my opponents raised I went all-in. A pretty simple strategy and knocked out 3 players at once.
I thought I was unbeatable and played a weak hand against a short stack player who went all-in – I lost. This wake up call made me revaluate the situation. I played more safely again and eliminated another player with a 4,4 all-in after the flop showed another 4. The opponent had A,A but the river produced another 4 so he was out.
After that I was into heads up play. My big stack against a short one. I must say as I had knocked the other 7 players and I was pretty confident. All I had to do was wait for a good hand. We played a while but the good hand did not appear so, becoming impatient, I played some less good hands and, maybe because of some luck in addition to a much bigger stack, eventually got the win.
In the 90 players tournament I knew that I needed to be more patient, to wait for the big hand and double up. I got it and hit a straight flush and beyond this concept I started building my stack. After playing for 3 hours I became chip leader with only 13 players left (12 getting in the money).
The 13th player left after another couple of hours yet I felt tired and bored and after hitting the final table with 7 players left my patience ended. I got beat by a 2,2 and went on the tilt, I went all-in with QQ an got smashed by a KK plus 1 K in the flop.
So analysing my game what worked for me was the short game not the long. In the long game I played well through to the most crucial stage and made bad mistakes on the final table. I went tilt and lost with good hands because I was tired, took some small hits and felt that as I had been the big stack much of the time I was somehow owed.
In conclusion, endurance in long poker tournaments is very important. It is important in the short ones too but you don’t need quite the same level of endurance for time on the table. Overall in any game be safe yet aggressive when you get good hands keep calm at all times. If you don’t have the patience endurance for big player number long games stick to shorter ones.
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