Early Stages of Tournament Play

Many players who are in the early stages of a tournament make the mistake of trying to jump out in front in an effort to build up a quick chip lead. But what they don’t understand is that a tournament is more like a marathon, not a sprint; and the rewards for playing a lot of pots early are generally not worth the risk.

In the earliest stages of a tournament all players are considered deep stacked meaning that they have at least 100-300 big blinds to play with. With the blinds so low in relation to the chip stacks, there is a lot more “gambling” going on in the early levels because players don’t fear going broke with lots of chips at their disposal. When the blinds are $25/50 and a player starts with $5K, calling a raise to $150 or even $250 just doesn’t seem like a lot of risk. Bluffing should not be on the agenda for you at this point because most of your opponents won’t be folding.

Strategically, in the early stages of a tournament you should play tighter, especially when the table is loose. Look for premium hands or solid speculative hands that you can play while in position, especially against multiple opponents. It’s smarter to play tight in loose games and play loose in tight games so you are able to maximize your stack.

Sometimes there are no antes in the early stages of the tournament, which means that there is less money to be won in each pot. The less money you get out of each pot that you win means that you need to win more pots to be profitable. Your hand needs to win a higher percentage of the time which just means that you need to be holding a good hand to win the pot. In other words, ‘tight is right’ in the early stages of the tournament.

Another advantage to this key strategy is that you start to create a table image at the tournament that will assist you when you start bluffing in the later stages of the tournament.

However, there is an exception to every rule! If you happen to find yourself in a very tight starting table, you should feel free to loosen up a little and play more hands against opponents that are easy to bluff because they are playing so tight, but obviously, only when you are in position.