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One of the easiest ways to start playing poker, especially online, is single table tournaments.You enter a tournament of up to 10 players with the top 3 finishers earning a prize, or a six-player table with the top two finishers in the money. With that in mind, here are the top 4 online poker tips to assist beginners that are new to online poker tournaments and want to improve their game. Be Prepared for a Long Session Most of these low buy-in field tournaments take several hours to complete. In this article we will point out some of the best live and online poker tournament strategy tips you can use to improve your game as quickly as possible. Tip 1: Play The Right Starting Hands Whether it be lack of patience, or an unfamiliarity with opening ranges, many tournament poker players still open too wide.

1. Tips To Win Online Poker Tournaments Real Money
2. Tips To Win Online Poker Tournaments 2020
3. Tips To Win Online Poker Tournaments 2019

Everyday players are sitting down at the tables and consistently making fundamental mistakes because of lack of knowledge, misinformation or failing to maintain focus.

Tournament poker strategy has advanced in leaps and bounds over the past decade.And an 'old-school' style will no longer cut it at the poker tournament tables. In modern tournament poker playing styles, bet-sizing and the general approach to specific situations have all changed drastically.

Even just a small strategical adjustment in poker can potentially save you a huge amount in the long run.

In this article we will point out some of the best live and online poker tournament strategy tips you can use to improve your game as quickly as possible.

Tip 1: Play The Right Starting Hands

Whether it be lack of patience, or an unfamiliarity with opening ranges, many tournament poker players still open too wide. This is especially true when it comes to early and middle position opens, where there are still many opponents left to act behind who can be dealt a strong hand.

The problem is when called, wide openers are often at a range disadvantage. Often being dominated by their opponents, they are vulnerable to 3 bets since they frequently won't have a holding strong enough to continue under pressure.

Furthermore, although opening a hand like 7 ♠ 5♠ might at times not be a terrible strategy from early or middle position, speculative hands like suited connectors and gappers, as well as small pairs, work best with deep stacks behind.

These speculative hand types infrequently connect strongly with the flop, so those times they do you want to have deep stakes behind to have the potential to win a huge pot. Modern day tournament structures often only see deep stack play occur during the first few levels of play. This leads us into the next tournament poker tip, being stack size aware.

Learn which hands to open raise in MTT's - Watch lesson 6.1 from the Road to Success MTT Course. A power-packed 50 minute video below, just use one of the button options to unlock it and get instant access.

Tip 2: Be Stack Size Aware

Effective stack size plays a critical role in a tournament players success.

Having a deep stack, and therefore expanding an opening range to include a lot of speculative suited hands and small pairs is a tournament strategy that is going to be punished if a number of short stacks are yet to act behind. This most notably occurs in turbo tournaments where the average stack size is quite short.

Short stacks will be in push-or-fold mode. Being short, they don't have time to wait and will be looking to take any opportunity they can to move all-in. This high rate of all-ins will leave wide openers frequently being forced to relinquish their hands, without even having the opportunity to try to hit a nice flop. Problematic hands often include; J8s , KTo and weak Ax hands.

It's not just short-stacks that can cause a problem, aggressive players will be looking to attack wide-openers. This is especially true when a player opens with a vulnerable M8-M14 (20bb-35bb) stack. 3 bets get good leverage against this stack size, since continuing in the pot represents committing a significant portion of a players stack.

Wide openers would be wise not to commit a large percentage of their stack with marginal holdings, and so will be forced to fold, or face being in a high-risk situation. Staying aware of your own stacks utility, as well as anticipating how opponents will utilize their stacks, is an important tournament poker tip to keep in mind.

POKER TIP: If you are currently using BB to calculate stack size, here's a look at why using 'M' is a better MTT strategy.

Tip 3: Be Careful Overplaying In The Early Stages

As a stack gets deeper, the less willing a competent player will be to put their entire stack at risk since they have more to lose. It's rare to see good players all-in during the early stages of a tournament with hands like AKo or JJ preflop.

Smart players recognize that their counterparts aren't going to be risking their entire stack with weaker hands like AQo . Therefore, even a strong hand like AK could be at a significant equity disadvantage facing a deep stacked opponents all-in range. Could you fold QQ here?

Rather than putting in an extra raise, often times just calling with even very strong hands in the early stage of a poker tournament has great benefits.

• Allows your opponents to continue with hands they were folding to a re-raise that you have crushed.
• Disguises the strength of your hand and keeps you unpredictable.
• Prevents you from getting all-in facing a super strong range where often times you're crushed.

Tip 4: Continuation Bet Aggressively But Not Always

Players have learnt the value of c-betting, but it's a strategy that is often misapplied. Being the preflop aggressor shouldn't lead to a mandatory c-bet and double barrels.

This is especially true in multi-way pots yet players continue to make fruitless c-bets with weak holdings into multiple opponents.

Even in heads-up situations, key factors to consider include;

• How does the flop texture interact with players ranges?
• Who has the strongest range?
• Who has nut advantage (the biggest share of super strong hands)?
• How passive or aggressive is the opponent we're facing?
• How does the stack size/SPR allow us to operate on the flop and future streets?

The following hand illustrates the effect nut advantage can have on profitable continuation betting and how it applies to this tournament poker tip:

Tip 5: Be ICM Aware

The Independent Chip Model or ICM, is a great model players use to make more profitable decisions when deep in a tournament and especially at a final table.

Unlike in cash games, chip values fluctuate depending on the stage of the tournament and the competing opponents stack sizes. At it's most extreme, ICM strategy can make A♠A♣: an easy fold preflop.

Imagine a situation in a satellite where 9 players get a World Series of Poker entry and there's 10 remaining. The action folds around to a player with 100,000 in tournament chips who moves all in from the small blind. You're sitting in the big blind with A♠A♣: and also 100,000 in chips. You look around and see a few opponents with only 1000 chips left, which is the size of the current big blind. Obviously one of these short stacks is likely to bust very soon.

Obviously one of these short stacks is likely to bust very soon. Moreover the chance that they collectively out survive your 100,000 stack is extremely remote. You'd likely be a 99% chance to get a WSOP entry, so why would you call with your A♠A♣ and risk busting next around 20% of the time?

Aside from calling too wide in spots when the most profitable strategy is to proceed tightly, the opposite can also be true when it comes to pressuring your opponents. ICM allows players when they have the opportunity to assert pressure on there opponents stacks, to go ahead and do so liberally, since thinking opponents counter-strategy is to play a tight range of hands.

Here's an example of how drastically a hand range can change when the opportunity to assert pressure at a final table exists. 5 of the 6 remaining players at the Pokerstars Sunday Millions have 15bb's, whilst the UTG player has a short 2bb stack. Since the 15bb stacks wants to avoid busting out next and missing out on a large pay jump before the immanent bust out of the 2bb stack, the small blind can adjust their all-in range. Instead of the profitably 57% all-in range in normal play, they can move all-in with 100% of hands to apply pressure on the big blind.

Whilst the big blind should adjust their calling range from the regular 36% to just 10% of hands to account for the ICM effect in play.

The PokerNerve Road to Success course teaches players how to master ICM situations, which is key to tournament poker success since ICM comes into play as the prizes become significant. If there was only one tournament poker tip that you take away from this article, it's that you need to know ICM!

Tip 6: Bet The Appropriate Size

Strong players are capitalizing on their opponents tendencies to bet too big or too small in a number of different situations. With some similar considerations to that of continuation betting, when selecting a bet size important aspects include;

• Which player's range does the board texture favor?
• Who has the greatest nut saturation?
• How does SPR influence our betting strategy

There are many great articles online about bet sizing. You should be sure to check out ThePokerBank's and the Pokerology's to learn more about this tournament tip.

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Tip 7: Take Equity Realization Into Account

Possibly due to the popularity growth of Twitch, many poker players approach to big blind play has evolved. The current trend is to defend the big blind with virtually any 2 cards, as some top pros elect to do, and the justification for this is taking advantage of the excellent pot odds being offered.

While the inclusion of antes combined with commonly seeing a small open raise size does offer the big blind generous pot odds, this has led to a fundamental flaw in the way many players approach big blind play in poker tournaments. The key concept overlooked, is equity realization.

Equity realization reflects a players ability to take a certain hand, and win their share of the pot, frequently enough, to make it profitable in the long-term. Although some top pros have the ability to win their equity share of the pot even out of position, less skilled players rarely do. This leads to a large chip loss in the long run.

It is quite difficult to realize of your equity when out of position, with no initiative and a weak range. This means them glorious odds you are being offered aren't quite as good as you think!

The following article explains this crucial tournament poker tip in more detail; Equity Realization.

Tip 8: Don't Miss Double And Triple Barrel Opportunities

'One and done' is the plight of many aspiring tournament poker players. Everyday at the tables I see players missing profitable opportunities to double, or even triple barrel. Understanding what turn and river cards are advantageous to a players range, along with opponent tendencies, are crucial parts of a winning barreling formula.

The most common scenario at the table, is a heads-up pot where the big blind calls an open-raise. And this happens to be a great spot to barrel. Big blind defenders have a wide range, and it's important to pressure this wide range, especially on only partially connected board textures with one or multiple high cards.

RedChipPoker has a great article on spotting profitable double barrel opportunities which you can read here: THE +EV DOUBLE BARREL GUIDE

Tip 9: Check-Raise More Flops

The biggest difference between the current tournament population, and the future generation, will likely be their approach to check-raising the flop. This opportunity typically occurs in a heads-up pot, after defending the big blind verse an opponents raise.

Currently, MTT players only check-raise the flop in this situation around 7-8% of the time, when closer to 20% is a more optimal strategy. On certain flop textures, check-raising close to 25% of the time is an extremely profitable strategy. And if players are getting out of line with their c-bets, then check-raising at an even higher frequency could be a profitable exploit.

By giving up too easily on a wide range of board textures, or taking a more passive approach and simply calling, c-betting can be done with reckless abandon. However, by selecting a nice mix of check-raising hands, combining some strong hands with some good semi-bluffing candidates, a check-raiser can become tricky to play against and exploit the average players tendency to over c-bet.

POKER TIP: Applied correctly and check-raising becomes a super powerful weapon in your arsenal leading to more profitable poker results. But also think beyond the flop, there's plenty of check-raising opportunities you may be missing. This video demonstrates an interesting turn check-raise situation.

We discuss check raising strategy in more detail in our post over on unfeltedpoker.com.

Tip 10: Develop A Good 3betting Strategy

Whilst 3 betting aggressively is a strategy many players employ, especially in online poker circles, failure to apply optimal 3 betting strategies has certainly led to a lot of spewy poker. Simply attacking opponents who are suspected of opening wide doesn't cut it in the modern poker world.

Players have learnt to deal with 3 bets more profitably, by mixing in some calls with timely 4 bets. Moreover, the role stack size plays when it comes to 3 betting it still largely misunderstood by much of the poker community.

Sure there are certain stack sizes where 3 bets gain a lot of leverage, but how about the role blockers play? And when is 9♦7♦ a better 3 bet candidate than K♦T♠ ? These are just some of the considerations when it comes to a profitable 3 betting strategy. See how to design strong 3betting ranges in this article by Donkr.

Bonus Poker Strategy Tip: Avoid and Deal with Downswings

As a poker player you want to earn your money as easily and as stress-free as possible right? Well, understanding ROI, variance and bankroll management can help (see TopPokerValue's article on bankroll management).

All poker players at some point experience downswings. In some cases, this can affect their play, volume or state of mind.

You'll be miserable, hating poker, playing less and earning less per tournament as your play will suffer.

Along with finding ways that work for you to keep a positive mindset, taking pro-active steps can help keep you confident by knowing you are dealing with the situation like a professional whilst at the same time taking positive action to get back on track and winning.

What is ROI and variance?

Every tournament you enter has an EV associated with it. So if you enter a $10 tourney, as a good player maybe you have a 30% ROI, so you make $3. So it doesn't matter whether you brick that tourney or win it for $5000, you make $3 in the long run.

Now, of course, you don't make $3 each time. 80-85% of the time you lose that $10, some percentage of the time you win a little bit, and some very small percentage of the time you win a lot. How small those ‘small percentages’ are primarily depends on not only your skill edge, but also the field size which is an extremely important concept that is often ignored.

Variance is a factor of two things:

1) Your edge

2) The field size

Example 1)

You play the Hot $55 which has $30K guaranteed, every day for a year on Pokerstars. It has 1600 runners and you have a 5% ROI, because turbo ROIs are small. Your average yearly profit is $605 however you will lose money on the year 55% of the time.

Example 2)

You play a $20 tourney with $3K guaranteed on a softer site every day for a year. It has 200 runners and you have a 30% ROI, because it's a normal speed tourney and you’re against an easier field. Your average yearly profit is $2400 and in this case you lose money only 12% of the time.

A lot of people would look at those two tournaments and make a decision based on the buy-in and 1st place prize money as to which was better to play, and it would be grossly wrong. Once you accept all the above, you realise that the 'up top' number is largely meaningless.

Yes, on the same site bigger fields may mean a lot of fish have registered to play, but you'll find a lot of small field, soft, non-peak hour tournaments have a great pro-to-fish ratio and hence are great value. Of course once you consider other sites that have smaller fields, you'll often find they are a better choice than what might be running on Pokerstars.

So what can you do?

When players start losing money and along with that, confidence, not only does their game deteriorate but they often compound that problem by failing to make rational decisions. Often losing players, or players on a downswing, go 'bink chasing' and decide to take a shot to win all their money back in one tourney. Or load up some quick $82 hyper-turbos to try to turn it all around quickly.

People get overly fixated on what's 'up top' and wanting to score big in one tournament. That’s a sure-fire strategy to fuel a down swing. If your house got knocked down would you try to slap it back up in a week? Take that opportunity to rebuild a better, stronger house.

Make sure you're adding in some study and keep focused (see Sky's Matsuhashi How To Study Poker series), and stay fresh and positive as you approach each session. Be smart and get back into profit quicker instead of enduring a 6-12 month variance rollercoaster!

Tips To Win Online Poker Tournaments Real Money

Closing Words On Tournament Poker Tips

Poker is a multi-faceted game which makes it fun but challenging. Challenge yourself to factor in the relevant concepts, and make more profitable decisions. Tighten up from the big blind, and in general around the table. This tip often quickly improves a new players results, or those that have a got a little sloppy with their play.

Calculate stack size using 'M'. Always be aware of your own, and your opponents stack sizes so you don't get yourself caught in awkward situations. One awkward situation that often comes up is when you hold an overpair to the board and an opponent puts the heat on you. Don't be afraid to make big lay downs to preserve your stack, especially in the early levels.

Be aware of your cbetting frequency. There's no need to waste tournament poker chips cbetting every time, especially when the pot is multi-way. Pick your spots to make profitable plays. Remember when it comes to the final table, regularly profitable playing ranges might alter due to the payouts. ICM is the key when it comes to those final big decisions.

Another key to success is knowing when to fire multiple bullets at your opponents. Barreling, especially against a wide big blind range can really help increase your non-showdown winnings. Finding ways to accumulate chips without always having the best hand is what top players do. This is why check-raising and having a good 3 betting strategy is so important. Correct use of these strategical concepts and the other tips outlines will get you winning more at the tables.

Now that you've acquired some great holdem tournament strategy tips to help you achieve MTT success, go out there an implement them!

One of the quickest way to improve your poker game is to take on a poker coaching, a course or join a poker training site; if that is something that interests you be sure to check out the PokerNerve road to Success Course for some advanced poker tournament strategy or you can check out HowToPlayPokerInfo's guide on poker training & poker courses to find the right option for you.

Any other poker tournament strategy tips? Leave them below in the comments, we would love to hear them!

Table Of Contents

Looking for a poker strategy to improve your chances of winning and begin to play like a professional poker player? You are not alone.

This article doesn't list all the poker tips and tricks under the sun. Instead, it focuses on specific Texas hold'em strategy elements that are proven to help you identify the best hands to play and improve your chances of winning at poker.

Continue reading to learn:

We have also put together a collection of online poker bonuses up for grabs at the best online poker sites. This way you can try all these poker strategy tips in this article when you play with other players.

In other words, if you are looking for a poker strategy guide with clear and easy-to-understand poker tips for beginners, you'll love this one.

Poker is one of the greatest games on earth. The combination of skill and luck, the psychological element, and the fact you can make money from it all help with its popularity.

Whether you play on the world's most prestigious poker tours or you just love to play poker with friends, in order for you to increase your poker winnings, you need to learn how to win at poker. To do this, you need to learn the basics, become familiar with concepts like poker odds and outs, and a few other strategy tips that will help you with every single poker hand you play.

AN INTRODUCTION TO 'POKER MATH': How to Calculate Pot Odds in Poker. is a simple guide to understand how to calculate pot odds in poker.

The process of learning how to win at Texas hold'em can be broken down into several categories. The main ones are:

• Basic Poker Tips: These include elements like the hands ranking, poker glossary, basic strategy articles, and other poker tips for beginners that can help you improve your hand.
• Advanced Poker Tips: These can include the correct use of poker tools like an odds calculator and more sophisticated strategies that will help you win at Texas hold'em poker with a variety of players.
• Long-Term Poker Training: The key to learning how to win at poker is to continue to develop different ways to approach the game and never sit on what you already know. The most effective way to succeed in this mission is to practice as much as you can and rely on resources like good poker books and poker training sites.

Basic Winning Poker Tips

If you want to discover how to win in poker, you need to learn the Texas hold'em rules.

When I first started playing poker, I didn't know anything about the game. That includes what starting hands I should play or what beats what in poker.

You'd be surprised at how many people sit in a real money poker game and expect to win at Texas Hold'em poker without even a clear understanding of the poker rules and other basics.

Those basics not only include knowing the poker hand rankings so you know what beats what, but also the various positions at the poker table and how they affect your strategy.

NEED HELP WITH THE BASICS? Poker Positions Explained: The Importance of Position in Poker is the most comprehensive guide to positions in poker. Read it to know how to adjust your play according to your position in the hand.

Tips To Win Online Poker Tournaments 2020

Basic tips help you learn key poker concepts like pot odds and implied pot odds, as well as the importance of following solid bankroll management rules.

Once armed with this information, you're ready to add a few more strings to your bow and move one step closer to discovering how to be a winning poker player.

Advanced Winning Poker Tips

The next stage in your quest to win at poker every time is to learn some of the more advanced concepts.

Fill your mind by studying such aspects of the game as:

You should also learn how to play against the various different poker player types — e.g., tight-aggressive, loose-aggressive, and loose-passive — because each opponent type needs to be approached with a different strategy.

Some of these advanced concepts became public knowledge in the mid-1990s when David Sklansky penned The Theory of Poker.

It is in this book that you will find Sklansky's thoughts on what he calls 'The Fundamental Theorem of Poker,' which reads:

'Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents' cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose.

Conversely, every time opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play their hands the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose.'

This text may seem long-winded, but the idea being expressed is quite simple.

The correct decision (i.e. the one that will bring you poker winnings) to make in any given poker situation is one that has the largest expected value, or 'EV' as it is commonly abbreviated.

If you were able to see your opponents' cards, you would be able to calculate the mathematically correct decision and would win at poker every time!

Obviously, it is not possible to calculate the correct decision to mathematical certainty as poker is a game played with incomplete information.

But you can use all of the available information presented to you to make a decision that would yield long-term positive results — decisions that are +EV.

WANT TO WIN SOME FAST POKER GAMES? The 2020 Spin and Go Strategy Guide is regarded as the ultimate resource to improve your results on the hottest jackpot sit-and-go games on the planet!

Apply Your Skills

While it is practically impossible to learn how to win at poker every time in a monetary sense, due to the luck factor, by making decisions that are +EV you actually are winning every time you play poker, at least in the long term.

• As a simplified example, imagine you are heads-up with an opponent in a hand where the board reads .
• You hold and your opponent has accidentally revealed , so you know that you need to complete your flush to win the hand.
• There is $100 in the pot and for some reason, your opponent decides to only bet $20.

In this situation you should snap-call, because even if the river is not a spade you actually gain in the long run.

Why is this the case?

Because the pot odds you're receiving are 5-to-1 (calling $20 to win $100) yet your chance of hitting your flush with one card to come is about 4.1-to-1.

As the pot odds are greater than the odds of hitting the hand, you actually make money in the long run even if your flush misses!

That is to say, if you faced the same choice many, many times and always chose correctly, you do stand to come out ahead thanks to your consistently '+EV' decisions. And that folks, is how to win at poker every time!

Of course, the game is more complex than that overly simple example suggests. But in essence, the idea still holds.

The key to how to win at poker is to make more +EV decisions that –EV ones, and then play enough for the math to make the results run true.

Check out the list of the best free poker games and use all these strategy tips to win more!

Use a Poker Odds Calculator

One way to improve your own game vastly and increase your chances of learning to win at Texas Hold'em is to play around with different scenarios to see what the mathematically correct decision would be.

Since we know that the relationship between mathematics and poker isn't one that everyone loves, we developed a free poker tool that helps you with all your poker calculations.

The next time you play Texas hold em poker and you want to know whether you hold a strong hand or not, load up the PokerNews Odds Calculator and look at how much equity your hand has on different boards and against different possible hands for your opponents.

There are other tools and poker cheat sheets out there that allow you to see how your exact hand fares against a possible range of hands, too.

Knowing this information and being able to draw upon it while in the heat of a hand could be the difference between winning at poker or losing.

Always look to extract as much value as mathematically possible, if you want always to win at poker.

Continue the Learning Process

It may seem to an outsider that the best poker players have discovered the secret of how to win at poker every time, yet this simply isn't true.

What is true is those at the top of the pile are extremely skilled poker players, but they are also some of the hardest working people in the industry, constantly working on their game and trying to improve.

The true secret to winning at poker is to be like them and continue to work on your game.

Poker Books

Whether you like to keep your collection on an e-reader like the Kindle or you prefer the old ink-and-paper combo, poker books are an essential element of any winning poker strategy.

The right poker books give you the unique opportunity to learn how to win at poker using the experience of the best players in the history of the game.

If you don't know where to start with your collection, have a look at Nolan Dalla's list of the best poker books ever written.

The ten poker guides in the list will help you win at poker more than any poker cheat sheets or quick tips ever will.

The best part? These poker books won't help you only with Texas hold'em but will give you the opportunity to improve your play also if you prefer other games like Omaha poker, five-card draw, stud poker, and many other card games.

Tips To Win Online Poker Tournaments 2019

Poker Videos

Youtube is another great resource to find good strategy guides to improve your poker games.

While some of the best videos are kept behind a paywall by a number of advanced poker training sites (more on that later), videos are another great resource to get better results when you play cash games and poker tournaments.

A great starting point with a lot of useful poker tips for beginners is the official PokerNews YouTube Channel.

Over the past 15 years, the PokerNews team traveled the world and all the major poker tours to interview professional poker players and have them share the strategy secrets that made them as successful as they are.

The Poker News strategy videos are your best option to learn poker winning strategies if you are on a budget.

Click here to access the channel and browse through hundreds of free poker videos.

Poker Training Sites

If you really want to learn poker and you don't want to be stuck playing low stakes games forever, you need to consider joining one of the best poker training sites.

While the best ones are not for free, the level of coaching and help you get from them is essential to progress in real money poker and compete with other players at the highest levels.

If you are new to the world of online poker training and you don't know the difference between resources like Upswing Poker, Run it Once, and Daniel Negreanu's Masterclass, here's an overview of the best poker training sites.

What's Next?

Learning how to win at poker requires a lot of work - and a lot of reading. Now that you know what to expect and what tools can help you reach your goals, it's time to move onto other in-depth poker guides like:

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