Tips For Tournament Play:
PLAY LESS HANDS! The less hands you play, the more money you will keep. This doesn’t just go for tournaments but for poker in general. Play only the best possible hands you can! The ones that will give you the best value for the money.
One time I saw a guy make it to the final table who WASN’T even there half the time! That’s right! He made his fortune at the start of the tournament then posted and folded his hands. He made it to the final table by not playing any hands! This goes with the advice above, the less hands you play the better
IF somone is ALL-IN and someone else call’s you best BE OUT of the hand. Unless you have an AWESOME hand (and sometimes even if you do) you should fold!
Maintain yourself throughout the tournament. If you suffer a BADbeat, get over it! Think through every move you make.
Always leave yourself outs!
Unless your playing for a WPT title — Play for a PLACE not for first. Your play should always be enough to place at the final table and as long as you make it there you are going to win something. So just aim to place, and if you win — hey thats an added bonus. But play to win and winning is in placement!
OLD TIPS found on the internet:
Click between game tabs to refresh your table listings
This trick is useful mainly for SnG (sit and go / single table) tournaments, which are notoriously quick to fill up. Many times, you’ll see “Wtng for 5 players” as the table status, but when you click on the game, it will have already started. This is due to the table status not updating quickly, which you can force by clicking between tabs. Of note however, is that Party Poker and Poker Stars has recently upped the refresh rate of the tables substantially, so this isn’t a major issue like it used to be.
Keep player notes on opponents
I cannot stress this enough. So much so that I will be writing an article on how to take some good notes in the future (updated: Player Notes page now up). While you always want to be paying attention to how people are playing, in online poker, players are always coming and going, which doesn’t give you time to feel them out. Taking notes cam help you when you play these opponents again. Even if you aren’t going to play this person it again, taking notes makes it much easier to keep a mental track of how each player plays and what to expect from them. The big things to note are: smart or stupid, aggressive or passive, tight or loose, straight up or bluffs, bets out a draw or not and what kind of hands do they play or pre-flop raise with. Yes, this is a lot of information to note, but it will help you in the long run.
Get hand histories when players don’t show their at the river this one is IMPORTANT
Great Party Poker trick that I’m sure many people have figured out. Many times on the river, only the winning hand is shown – but you are very interested in seeing what the loser was holding too. Simply click on the hand number at the top right of the screen and request the hand history for that game via email. Depending on how busy Party Poker is at the moment, you should get an email with the history in a matter of minutes.
Scroll to the bottom of the history and you can instantly find out what the other player was holding. I normally do this in conjunction with player notes, to get me a good idea of what a player is willing to play with on a river. Showdown information is always the most critical, as you can analyze their decision making process from the ground up.
Wait a full table rotation before posting the BB
This tip is probably debatable by many of the players out there. In my opinion, unless you know what you are doing, this tactic will save you money in the long run by letting you not only get mentally prepared for the game, but also gives you invalable time to evaluate your opponents. The worst thing that can happen is to get dealt a strong hand early and then get caught in a massive raising war between two players you don’t know. They could be two maniacs for sure, but what if one of them is a maniac and the other player is super-tight? Most likely, that super tight player is holding the nuts while you are bumbling by with top pair or two pair. Not a good move. So be patient, take notes in the meanwhile and save money in the long run.
Turn on your sound, turn down the music
It’s no secret that us humans work better using more of our senses, otherwise we wouldn’t have been born the way we are. Yes, it may get annoying to hear the dinks, beeps and chip sounds of the game after awhile, but hearing those audible cues are vital to your play. You are much less prone to make mistakes when you can hear and see what people are doing, as opposed to just seeing it. For me, I notice it helps my timing when I am trying to figure out if I am onto a online tell or not, based on the delay during the other person’s actions.
Show the avatars (people in chairs), but don’t stereotype them
This is probably the most debatable tip I’m guessing, because if you’ve turned them off, you probably really don’t like the avatars to begin with. And if you do like avatars, well, they’re probably on already. I just want to get my two cents in about this Party Poker tip by saying that even though avatars are computer graphics, it’s again human nature to easily identify faces. That means we can more easily associate a personality to a face, so it makes it easier to remember how someone is playing when we can attach a face to a playing style.
That being said, I’m sure there is some negative influence of these faces as well, because we probably tend to associate a certain avatar with a playing style. For instance, I’ll admit that I used to mentally associate one of the avatar pictures with bluffing. I think this was caused by a long string of coincidences, when different players using that avatar would constantly bluff, so I just starting linking that specific avatar with bluffing. Don’t let this happen to you.
Learn to leave the table
This is really just a general poker tip, but it still nabs even the poker pros at times. At Party Poker, if you find that you are being outplayed, outclassed or just unlucky at the table, it’s ok to leave. Don’t think about getting your money back or getting revenge on the bastard that rivered you for the 3rd time now. If you are losing money at your table, you do NOT have good table image no matter what you might think. Not only are you not in a good mood, which puts you on tilt (admit it or not), but other players will be more likely to make plays against you. This makes your game harder in more ways than you want. With so many tables, just get up and go, it’s that easy.
I can’t stress this enough if the game gets short-handed (6 or less players) and you are not familiar with short-handed play. This is an easy way to lose a lot of cash if you don’t know what you are doing. I see this happen all the time, when a table breaks up and I’m stuck with two solid players and three guys who don’t realize they are about to get run over. Don’t be road kill when all it takes is a single click.
Buy-in more than necessary at the poker table
If you’ve been doing your homework, you’ll know that you should always sit in with at minimum 20 times the big blind at any poker table. In the realities of online poker, this should be more along the lines of at least 40 times the BB. Personally, I like to sit down with practically 100x the BB. You should think about doing this too. Why? First, don’t ever be in the position of holding the nuts and not having enough money to raise the pot. I’ve seen this happen too many times, where a guy will have flopped a full house in a $3/6 game, but only have $12 in his bankroll. He could have made a killing if it weren’t for the fact he was playing with a small stack. DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!
If you are worried about losing your money, you should stop playing poker, switch tables or take a break. Second reason to buy more than is necessary, is for intimidation factor. Opinions may differ, but faced off against a big stack, my feelings are that a good amount of players (but not all) show a bit more respect (read: fear) and will play accordingly – which is to your benefit. Now, don’t read this as buying in for $1,000 in a $1/2 game, because then people will think you are just nuts, but $400.. now we’re talking.
Move out of the $5 tournaments ASAP
This isn’t as much a trick as it is advice. The $5 sit and go tournaments on Party Poker are cheap, but at a price. With a $1 entry fee, this amounts to a 20% rake, which is no light task to beat. If you are good enough to win enough $5 tournaments that you can beat this rake, you are good enough to be playing at the $10 tournaments. There really is no difference between the two; and in my opinion, the $10 tournaments might even be easier because you don’t get filled out tables of nothing but calling stations. Try as you might and throw the book of poker at me, but there almost nothing humanly possible you can do at an entire table of maniacs or calling stations. The game makes more sense at $10 and even more sense at $30.
Protect your computer!
This may sound like some paranoid or strange advice, but it never hurts to take extra precautions when it comes to protecting your computer and poker information. Anti-virus software of course is nice, but in reality isn’t as much a threat as spyware or trojans. I recommend getting Ad-Aware 6, which is a very popular (and free!) spyware killer that will thouroughly clean your system out of tracking junk on your computer. Firewall software is great too and highly recommended. Windows XP comes built in with it’s own firewall that you can enable, but other software like BlackIce defender are even better. Chances are nobody will be coming after you for your poker passwords, but why chance it?
