7 Tournament Tips to Help You Run Deep

This episode reveals 7 fundamental tips for poker tournaments that will help you run deep more often and play more confidently. The advice ranges from preflop tactics to postflop strategies. Pay close attention if you want to build bigger stacks and win tournaments!

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Transcript

Mike (00:00):
Let's Level Up your tournament poker skills. I'm about to share seven fundamental tips that will help you run deeper and play more confidently in tournaments. My name is Mike Brady and I'm flying solo today. Gary Blackwood will be back in the next episode. All of these tips were originally written by an absolute poker legend when it comes to tournaments. His name is Miikka Anttonen. He's a Finnish poker player. He put up some amazing numbers in his time as a poker pro so you can trust these tips. Tip number one is to raise a lot when the action folds to you, but don't go overboard. With antes in play, a 2.25 big blind raise has to pick up the pot less than half the time to show an immediate profit, and that's not including the hands post flop potential. Open small and often is a phrase that drove pre-flop strategy of every tournament regular for years and it still has a lot of merit just because the math backs it up.
(00:54):
For example, suppose you're in a tournament and the blinds are 200 and 400 with a 400 big blind ante. Let's also say that you have deep stacks, let's say 40,000 chips, which would be a hundred big blinds, and you are on the button with ten five suited, when the action folds to you. You raise it up to 900. That's 2.25 big blinds. This raise only has to work about 47.8% of the time to show an immediate profit. If the blinds are somewhat tight players, which they often are, especially if you play live tournaments, there's a reasonable chance that they aren't collectively playing back with 52.2% of hands. If they aren't, your raise is instantly making money. Even if you had two napkins in your hand, it would be profitable to raise it up on the button, but even if they are playing back at you more than 52.2% of the time, that's fine because this isn't accounting for all the pots
(01:47):
you'll win post flop. Sometimes you'll flop something and win the pot at showdown. Sometimes you'll win the pot with a continuation bet on the flop, et cetera. There's a ton of ways for you to win the pot post flop. Against weaker opposition raising small and often works really well, especially in late position. If the blinds are loose and or aggressive players, you should tighten up a bit, but you might be surprised by just how loose you can still play on the button even against pretty aggressive players. Case in point, I'm going to pull up the default open raising range for the player on the button with 100 big blind stacks from Upswing Poker's Advanced Tournament Course, Road to Victory, which was made by two elite tournament players, Nick Petrangelo and Darren Elias. This chart shows that at equilibrium, in other words, how a solver would play the situation, you can raise 53.7% of hands from the button for a 2.8 x raise when the action folds to you.
(02:44):
This range includes hands as weak as jack two suited, ten seven offsuit, nine seven offsuit, king five offsuit, and five three suited. It's a super, super wide range and this is assuming your opponents are playing as aggressively as a solver would and if you know anything about solvers, you know that they are absolutely savage and your human opponents probably aren't playing nearly that aggressive, which means you can arguably open raise even wider. This chart's raising range is just the baseline. If you have information about your opponents in the blinds, you absolutely can adjust your strategy. Against some blinds it's correct to open any two on the button. If your opponents are very weak and very tight, you can absolutely pull that off. Against very aggressive players you'll want to cut out the weakest stuff from that range. If it's two very, very aggressive players in the small and big blind, I know I'm not going to be raising jack two suited and ten three suited.
(03:38):
I'll go ahead and get out of the way with those and let the good players battle. I should note there's a chart like the one I'm looking at for hundreds of common scenarios inside Upswing Poker's Advanced Tournament Course, Road to Victory, and that course is 30% off right now during the World Series of Tournaments Sale at upswingpoker.com. We've also got a couple of course bundles that we put together, so if you want to grab a couple of courses or even up to six courses all at once at a massive discount of up to 51%, head over to upswingpoker.com and click the banner at the top of the page to browse all available deals. Moving on to tip number two, defend your big blind a lot. You just learned that a small raise only has to work around half the time to profit. As the big blind
(04:23):
the burden is mostly on you to stop people from raising too often. One factor that allows you to defend more often is the extremely generous pot odds that you're being offered when you're sitting in the big blind. You've already got that one big blind in there, usually the raise is only to two or three big blinds, so you're getting a really solid discount. For example, suppose the blinds are 200 and 400 again with that same 400 big blind ante and you are in the big blind. A player in late position raises to 900 and the action is on you. You need to call 500 chips to see the flop and there are already 1900 chips in the pot, based on those pot odds, you need just 20.8% to call profitably. That is very little. Even seven two offsuit has more than that against a standard button range.
(05:10):
It has about 29% in case you're wondering, but this is super important. You can't defend quite as wide as your raw equity might lead you to believe, this is because you still have to play your hand post-flop and you're out of position. The raw equity of your hand versus their range doesn't quite tell the full story because in order to realize your equity, you need to reach showdown. A lot of the times with seven two offsuit, for example, you're going to miss the flop, they're going to bet you're going to fold and who knows, you might've hit a seven on the turn and that would've won, so you don't actually realize all of that raw equity that you had. As a result, you have to defend a fair bit tighter than your raw equity might lead you to believe. As a good rule of thumb, especially if you aren't particularly experienced, it's a good idea to call with hands that have some sort of post flop playability, so against a button raise, you're going to fold that seven two offsuit.
(06:03):
You're probably going to fold the seven three offsuit, but once you get up to like seven five offsuit or seven six offsuit, those hands have enough playability, you're going to flop some straight draws. You obviously can flop some pairs and such that they are going to be worth defending against a button range, for example. I'm going to pull up another range from the Advanced Road to Victory tournament course on upswing poker. I'm going to pull up the big blind defense range versus a button raise at 50 big blinds and the range is quite wide. We're calling with 66.4% of hands and three betting with 12.8% of hands, which means we're collectively defending with about 79% of hands. Only 21% of hands are hitting the muck here against this small raise from the button. We're calling with hands as weak as six four offsuit, five three offsuit, jack four offsuit every suited hand is getting in there for a call because put simply are pod odds are good enough to defend with those hands and they play well enough post-flop to justify calling that raise even out of position.
(07:00):
If playing this wide of a range makes you uncomfortable, there's no shame in defending a little less often, but just make sure to never fold a hand as strong as eight six suited or queen ten offsuit to a single small raise. I personally call almost any two cards against a weak opponent's raise. I just think I can effectively maneuver post flop against them and I will realize more equity because of my skill advantage. So I defend very wide against weaker players, but not even an open from a top player like Nick Petrangelo could get me to fold a hand like Queen seven offsuit or four three suited assuming it's heads up. And that segues nicely into a quick note I want to make on defending your big blind multi-way. Multi-way pots are a different beast. On one hand, your pot odds are better because there's extra money in the pot from those other calls, but on the other hand, it's harder to realize your equity with multiple players in the pot.
(07:52):
In a heads up pot hitting one pair will often be good enough to win. For example, if I defend my big blind with King six and the flop comes eight six two in a heads up pot, that's a relative monster. It's hard to have a better hand than King six on eight six two, but imagine that same situation if there's four players in the pot, it becomes debatable if you can even call a continuation bet because one of them is quite likely to have a pocket pair or at least a draw that has you in not too great of shape and you're often going to just have to get out of there with a hand as strong as even middle pair. So the big takeaway on defending your big blind multiway is despite the improved pot odds, you need to be more picky about which hands you defend. You should still be calling with most suited hands and arguably with connected hands like Jack ten offsuit as well, but you should stay away from disconnected hands that don't flop well and will often be dominated such as King five offsuit.
(08:42):
These hands often end up as weak pairs with a little chance of reaching showdown, which is not what you want in multi-way pots. Moving on to tip number three, be wary of four bet shoves when you're three betting with middling stacks, I'm talking about between 25 and 40 big blinds or thereabouts. Since you'll be three betting with super strong hands like Pocket Aces and Ace King suited, you need to balance out those strong hands with some three bet bluffs in order to keep your strategy unpredictable. You don't only want a three bet with strong hands that makes you pretty easy to predict and play against, but the specific hands with which you three bet bluff will be greatly impacted by stack size. When you have between 25 and 40 big blinds, you're going to want a three bet bluff with hands slightly worse than your call worthy hands.
(09:28):
For example, suppose you are in the cutoff and the player directly to your right in the hijack raises it up, good three bet bluffs in this spot include hands like king nine suited, king jack offsuit and Ace ten offsuit. These are hands just below hands that are worth calling like king ten suited, queen ten suited or king queen offsuit. If your opponent four bets all in against your three bet, you'll be forced to fold these three bet bluffs, but it's really not a big deal to fold a hand like King nine suited against an all-in four bet because you were almost certainly crushed. But if you three bet with a stronger hand, let's say king queen suited and are forced to fold that, that's a ton of equity hitting the muck and you don't want to be throwing away that much equity. So that king Queen suited either just calls that initial raise at 30 big blinds king queen suited only calls versus a raise.
(10:20):
It never three bets, it never folds. It has a clear preference towards calling according to the charts in the advanced tournament course road to victory. And then at 25 and 20 blinds it even starts to just go all in to really push its equity. But what you really want to avoid is three betting non all in with these sort of in-between hands and then potentially being forced to fold versus a four bet shove should your opponent do that. So here's the key takeaway for this tip. When you're three betting non all in with middling stacks, you either want to have a very good hand with which you would welcome a four bet shove, a hand like Aces, kings Ace King suited or you want to have a hand that doesn't really mind facing a four bet shove because you could just fold it happily and not really worry too much about it.
(11:02):
That would be a hand like king nine suited, king eight suited, king jack offsuit, stuff like that. Hands that are worth playing. They're worth attacking that raise and trying to take down the pot pre-flop but don't mind so much having to fold against a four bet shove. Tip number four is also about three betting, but this time with deep stacks, when you have deep stacks in a tournament, you should just three bet like it's a cash game. Unlike when you have a middling stack, things change quite dramatically as stacks get closer to a hundred big blinds and the correct approach to three betting resembles that of a cash game. This approach is pretty simple. Three bet with a linear range, AKA a merged range. In other words, your three betting range will include the very best hands as well as some good and playable hands that are just below the very best hands.
(11:48):
I'm going to pull up another chart from that advanced tournament course Road to Victory. This time I'm looking at how the cutoff should play against a hijack raise with 100 big blinds, so it's the same positional matchup we were just looking at, but now we're looking at it with deep stacks, instead of those middling stacks. You still get to do a lot of calling thanks to the small raise and the antes that are in the pot. You just have really good pot odds and tournaments and you get to call quite often against raises for that reason, but the composition of the three betting range is drastically different from that last example. You're meant to three bet with the very best hands, Aces, kings, ace king suited, et cetera. Strong and playable hands like king queen suited, ace queen offsuit, pocket tens and very playable suited hands like Ace five suited, king ten suited, ten nine suited and the like.
(12:33):
When your three bet is called with these deep stacks, you'll be ready to battle post flop with this strong and diverse range, pretty much no matter what the flop comes, you are going to have a hand in your range that hits it and that's going to make you tough to play against and it's going to make your life a lot easier post flop. Should you face a four bet, you'll have plenty of hands that can justifiably continue with either a call or a five bet shove. Moving on to tip number five, don't continuation bet every hand against every player. A decade or so ago, players put a lot less thought into which boards connect with which players range. Even good players would continuation bet pretty much every flop because a half pot continuation bet only has to work about 33% of the time to return a profit and especially about 10, 15 years ago, it probably did.
(13:21):
People were very tight out of the big blind. They folded way too often against continuation bets. They didn't check raise enough, so that strategy worked pretty well, but players nowadays are much more aware of how things work. As a result, you have to put more thought into your continuation betting strategy. Continuation betting with your whole range on every board against every player probably isn't going to be the right approach. Here's the strategy that Miikka Anttonen suggests. Ask yourself four questions whenever you see a flop and are considering a continuation bet. Question number one, whose range does this flop hit the best? Question number two, who has the most super strong hands on this flop? Question number three, will my opponent think this flop hit my range? And question number four, what does my opponent's range look like overall? You aren't looking for complex specific answers here.
(14:11):
There's no time for that while you're playing. You can just do this in an efficient, quick and logical way. For example, suppose you're deciding whether or not to continuation bet versus the big blind on a ten eight six flop and let's say you raised from under the gun so you have a very tight compact range that really includes a lot of high cards and not too many speculative hands because those hands just aren't really worth raising every time from early position. Let's run through the four questions. Question number one, whose range does this Ten eight six flop hit the best? The answer is the big blind. You might have more overpairs that the big blind mostly doesn't have, but you also have a lot more over card hands like Ace King, king queen, stuff like that that has totally missed the flop. The big blind is much more likely to have a piece of this ten eight six flop.
(14:59):
They're going to have hands like nine seven suited, eight six suited, jack nine suited for a straight draw. So overall this board is going to hit their range more than it hits yours. Question number two, who has the most super strong hands on this board? And the answer is once again, your opponent, you both probably have the same amount of sets. You can both have pocket tens, pocket eights and pocket sixes at the same frequency, but he has all the straights and two pairs, whereas you pretty much have none of them. You probably wouldn't raise under the gun pre-flop with a hand like eight six suited. Maybe you would ten eight suited, probably not, nine seven suited, but who knows only you know your game. But the point is they're way more likely to have two pair or a straight, which means they simply have more super strong hands. And yeah, you might have more overpairs, but an overpair like Pocket Aces really isn't anywhere near the nuts on a board like ten eight six, you're not going to be willing to put 50 plus big blinds in on this flop.
(15:53):
You're almost always going to be in rough shape if that happens. So you can't really consider an overpair a super strong hand on this board. So as a result, this board favors them, when it comes to super strong hands. We call this the nut advantage. Question number three, will my opponent think this flop hits my range? And I think the answer is pretty clear cut here. Since your range is basically pocket pairs and high card hands such as Suited Broadways, Ace ten suited, Ace Jack Offsuit, your opponent is going to have a pretty good idea where you're at in this hand. They're going to be able to put you on a range that's mostly over cards and overpairs. It's never ideal when your opponent is able to easily predict where you're at, so that's another question that really isn't working in your favor.
(16:36):
Question number four, what does my opponent's range look like? This is the toughest one to answer by far, especially if you have no reads because some people defend their big blind way differently than others, but it is safe to assume that no matter who your opponent is, they're going to have a huge amount of hands that are of the one pair plus straight draw variety. For example, ten nine on this ten eight six board or something like eight nine or six seven. And then a lot of players are going to have nine seven suited, nine seven offsuit, so they're going to have a ton of straights in their range. They're going to have a ton of two pairs with hands like eight six, ten six suited, maybe ten eight. So overall they're going to have a lot fewer hands that have completely whiffed than you. Based on our answers to these questions, we can conclude a couple notable things.
(17:22):
The big blind has all the super strong hands and you don't, and the vast majority of the big blinds range, we'll call at least one bet. Thus it's a really bad idea to just continuation bet every time with your air on this ten eight six board. You should simply check back with some hands that have missed choosing to bluff with hands that can fire multiple barrels on a variety of run outs such as queen jack suited. That's a hand that has two over cards. It has a straight draw. Maybe you have a backdoor flush draw to go with it. That's the type of hand you should be continuation betting on this board, but if you have a hand like King Queen Offsuit or Ace King offsuit, you should absolutely not be continuation betting every time on this ten eight six flop. Once you've trained yourself to ask these four questions every time you see a flop, it will only take a second or two to come up with your game plan.
(18:07):
Of course, it's also a good idea to fine tune your game between sessions by playing around with sims or range software like the Lucid GTO trainer, but just doing this questions exercise over and over again Every time you see a flop will be enough to solve most practical situations in real time. Tip number six, have a plan for future streets. This is a tip that really works in all game types, but it is important in tournaments just like it is in cash games, and this tip really goes hand in hand with tip number five. Before any decision pre flop or on the flop or on the turn, even on the river, you should always have a rough plan for each likely outcome. This doesn't mean you have to simulate every single possible outcome in your head ahead of time. That's impractical. Just a rough idea will more than suffice in game.
(18:54):
Let's go back to that ten eight six rainbow flop and let's say your hand is queen jack suited with a backdoor flush draw. Before betting you should ask yourself two new questions to help you plan ahead, and this is going to help you avoid tricky spots later on. Question number one, what will I do if my opponent raises? Question number two, what turn cards will I barrel? In other words, what turn cards will I bet again, should my opponent call on the flop? By asking yourself these two questions, you're planning one step ahead and you're going to avoid a lot of tricky spots. This is the bare minimum by the way, world-class players also plan ahead to rivers. They think about how both players ranges are affected by every runout and a lot more. In this example, my plan would be something along the lines of this. Question
(19:38):
number one, what will I do if my opponent raises on this ten eight six flop where I have two overs, a gutshot and a backdoor flush draw? The answer to this one really depends on how big my opponent raises. If my opponent uses a somewhat small raise size, I could definitely peel and see a turn card with my two overs and a gutshot straight draw and a backdoor flush draw. But if they raise big, I think I'm pretty often going to get out of the way. Question number two, what turn cards will I barrel? I'll barrel every turn that gives me a flush draw. Like I said, I have a backdoor flush draw on the flop. Let's say I have a queen jack of hearts and the board is ten eight six with one heart. So if the turn is a heart, I will barrel again. Naturally I'll also barrel every king or ace as a semi bluff because I'll be picking up a two-way straight draw on those cards.
(20:22):
And of course, if I turn a nine, jack or queen, I'm going to have a pretty strong hand either top pair or the nut straight, and I'm going to continue betting with those as well. If the turn card is a total brick, let's say an offsuit two, I might just take a free card knowing that my opponent probably isn't going to fold to a second bet if they have a hand like nine eight, and I still have quite a few outs that I could potentially hit on the river. So that would be my general plan here. And even if it's not the perfect plan, even if I study the situation afterwards and I change my mind about what the best course of action was, at least I had a plan in the moment and had an idea of how the hand was going to play out, and that's what's going to help me be prepared and play better as the hand progresses.
(21:06):
The final tip, tip number seven, learn how to play heads up. Even just the basics. It may seem unnecessary to practice heads up since it's so rare to get heads up in a tournament. Plus, once you're there, you're already satisfied because you've locked up such a big win. So you might think I've already won however many buy-ins. Who really cares if I win that heads up match? But that huge pay jump from second to first is worth preparing for. Tournament payout structures vary, but the winner of the tournament will always get by far the biggest chunk of the prize pool, and it's often a massive swing between second and first. In a typical $20 buy-in 10K guaranteed online tournament, the winner will get approximately $2,500 and the runner up will be left with around $1,500. That is a 50 buy-in swing between first and second place.
(21:55):
Think about how it feels to be on the money bubble of a tournament where you're like a short stack and you really want to squeak your way into the money just to get your money back and maybe a little bit more, that's one maybe one and a half buy-ins that you're fighting for in that situation, going from second to first is nearly 50 times as important as that, depending on what tournament you're in. Teaching you how to play heads up exactly as beyond the scope of this episode. I did a great episode with Doug Polk a while back called Doug Polks 30 Minute Guide to Heads Up Strategy, so you can go listen to that if you want to learn some of the basics of heads up, or you can use a tool like the Lucid GTO trainer to practice playing heads up against a perfect opponent, and that's a good place to get some reps in before your battling for high stakes glory.
(22:39):
But the key here is just to do some preparation, especially if you've made a final table that you're playing the next day or something like that. Do some heads up work, study some ranges. Get an idea of how heads up works post flop. Maybe even just watch two great players at the end of a tournament playing heads up. There are loads of those you could find on YouTube for free. We have a ton of great premium content and free content for that matter on Upswing Poker about playing heads up. So just do at least a little bit of due diligence and work on your Heads Up game so you're somewhat prepared. And oftentimes I think you'll find that if you've done even that few hours of study, you are going to be more prepared than the players sitting across from you when you're down to two, and that's going to allow you to scoop up a lot of expected value.
(23:24):
If you really want to book your biggest ever tournament win this season, you'll need two things on your side, a winning strategy and some good luck. The luck part is out of your hands, but there's still time for you to hone your strategy for victory before all the huge tournaments this summer in Vegas and around the world and online. Take advantage of our World Series of Tournaments Sale to prepare your game and get up to 51% off all of our top selling tournament courses made by elite pros, Darren Elias and Nick Petrangelo. I showed you just a handful of the ranges you'll get in the pre-flop tool and that pre-flop tool is included in all of our World Series of Tournaments Sale packages. So just head over to upswingpoker.com to grab one of those now, you will not regret it. If you got value from the free tips I've shared with you in this episode, please hit that like button or rate the podcast five stars and be sure to follow or subscribe if you want to be alerted when we release future episodes of Upswing Poker Level Up. Thanks for being with me today. I'll see you in the next one.