Five Concepts To Keep In Mind In 2015

Happy New Year! I hope you strive to make 2016 your best year yet! In this article, I am going to share with you five concepts you must keep in mind if you want to succeed at poker tournaments. While there are numerous concepts that must be mastered if you want to win at the highest rate, you simply must master these concepts to have a good chance of winning.

First, the chips you stand to lose are worth more than the chips you stand to gain, assuming you are a profitable poker player. This means that you should typically avoid any decision in a tournament that is roughly break-even. If you raise to two big blinds and someone goes all-in for 15 big blinds, you need to win 40 percent of the time based on the pot odds. If you think your hand will win 42 percent of the time versus your opponent’s range, you should probably fold. If you think you will win 50 percent of the time, you should happily call. While conserving your stack is vitally important, it is also important that you don’t let your opponents run you over.

Second, always ask yourself, “What hands are in my opponent’s range?” then figure out how you fare versus that range. If you have a normally strong preflop hand, such as 9-9 or A-Q, and you think your opponent should only have premium hands, perhaps A-A, K-K, Q-Q, and A-K, based on his actions, you should get out of the way. If you have an abnormally weak hand, such as king-high on the river, and you think your opponent’s range is almost entirely bluffs that you beat, feel free to call. As long as you are actively thinking about ranges and figuring out what you can do to exploit them, your skills will progress.

Third, analyze your opponents’ tendencies and adjust to take advantage of them. Most of the time, before your opponents play a single hand, you should make some assumptions about how they will play. If you pay attention and figure out how a typical tight player appears, you will be able to pinpoint these players and stay out of their way. If you accurately assess that someone will be a blatant maniac, you can make hero-calls from the first hand. Don’t be afraid to get out of line in order to exploit your opposition.

Fourth, don’t overvalue top pair. Almost every single time I play in a deep-stacked event, I witness an amateur player obliterate a stack by making top pair and then refusing to fold, even when a huge amount of big blinds are at risk. With 150 big blind stacks or more, when someone raises and you reraise with A-K, if the flop comes K-J-7, if you bet and get raised, you must be aware that you could be crushed by J-J, 7-7 or K-J. If you think your opponent will only put a ton of chips in the pot with a premium hand, especially in a reraised pot, you should strongly consider exploiting your opponent by folding.

Finally, realize that when many players see the flop, someone is likely to make a strong hand. When you raise with A-K and get six callers, if the flop doesn’t improve you to at least top pair, you should almost certainly check-fold. It is simply too likely that one of your opponents has a strong hand that will not fold to multiple streets of aggression. If you consistently make a continuation bet in this situation, you are almost certainly spewing a lot of equity.

I hope you use these five tips to improve your poker skills in 2016. Let me know how it goes on Twitter @JonathanLittle. Thanks for reading and good luck! ♠

Jonathan Little is a two-time WPT champion with more than $6 million in tournament winnings. Each week, he posts an educational blog and podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com, where you can get a FREE poker training video that details five things you must master if you want to win at tournament poker.