Building a chip stack in poker tournaments is a multi layered process. During the first hour of No Limit Texas Holdem tournaments you should basically be playing solid poker. Blind stealing is of secondary importance. Come in with speculative hands with high implied odds in Late Position, but otherwise just play solid.
After the first hour or so, tourney play becomes less and less about the cards and more about situations. What you hold is of relatively less importance than how many chips you have in front of you vs. your opponent and the precise stage of the tourney you’re in.
Look for opportunities to set traps, induce bluffs - Don’t just bet your strong hands, check-fold your misses and slow play your monsters. Those betting patterns will get picked up on. Say you have top pair AK on an A86 board with a two flush. You strongly bet the flop and turn (a brick) out of position and get called. River comes another brick, no flush. I would check here in many instances and call a bet. If you bet, you’re not going to get called by the missed draw and you may get raised by a hand that was trapping you with a set or two pair. You may miss a value bet from a player with an inferior Ace who ends up checking behind on the river, but against aggressive players I like to check and let them bluff at it, or save myself some chips by not getting raised when they do have me beat. This kind of bluff inducing is a real stack builder.
When you have position you’ll sometimes get more chips if you check behind on a flop that hits you with something as simple as top pair, fair kicker but has a two flush. Most say bet and “make draws pay”, but when head’s up in a tourney, you can risk a free card as it’s not likely that he has that exact draw. Try to induce the bluff against a hand that missed completely on the next card. Checking and playing passively like this works well against overly aggressive players. Since most of the time when you check, you fold to a bet, they’ll take a check for weakness so you should check behind even only moderately strong hands as well as your monsters. Making draws pay is not nearly as important a concept in your typical HU match up in NLHE as it is in your typical multiway pots in limit ring games. So obviously bet strong if against more than one opponent.
Blind stealing - Once the blinds get to 50/100, then you need to open up and start stealing. As others have suggested, this means just open raising when it gets to you in late-late-middle position with just about anything. Not every time, but enough to at least keep pace. Sometimes you don’t get a lot of chances as there are raises ahead of you by aggressive players. Middle stages is all about stealing so you can’t just wait for cards or you’ll get ground down. You don’t always have to have it folded to you to steal either. Sometimes you’ll get one of those guys who limps too much looking for multiway action. You’ll know he’s doing it with a moderate hand since he’s done it before and check-folded the flop. I often take a “no limping on my button” attitude and will raise any 2 on the button and watch him and the blinds fold and pick up a nice pot.
Firing second barrel - When you do get called by one of the blinds you often have to lay out a good sized bet even if the flop misses you. That can be scary when you were stealing with 75o and the flop comes A8Q, but often that board is just as scary or more so for your opponent. You’ll get him to fold hands like medium pocket pairs in these situations. You pick up even nicer pots when you have the guts to fire out again. And if you get check-raised, easy fold. You have to be careful sometimes and check behind in these situations and just check and fold on the turn as a check raise may cost you too much. You can’t fire out at every single flop as a savvy player is looking to put the big check-raise on you. That, and you want to set up later plays for when you do flop a big hand and induce a turn bet by your foe by checking behind. However, I usually err on the side of firing out on any flop when checked to in these situations.
Try this in your next low buy in tourney as an experiment. Once you’re into the 2nd hour with an above average stack and you’re not in any <10BB all-in or fold mode, try raising every time it’s folded to you on SB, button, CO, CO+1 and even CO+2. Often you’ll find the players behind you to be very tight and passively trying to survive and you’ll pick up tons of blinds. Finally, they catch on to your bullying ways and stop waiting for AK and play back at you with A9o. Hopefully, that’s the time you have AK or a big pair and bust them. One caveat to this experiment: don’t steal with garbage from a stack so short that if he moves in you’re obliged by odds to call. You’re just asking to double them up and you don’t really want to show your stealing hands. And don’t try to bully a LAG guy who has 10X your chips. And don’t do it five times in a row when it’s folded to you on a real tight table…well you get the idea, do it when the situation calls for it.
Semi-bluffing - Another place to get aggressive is semi-bluffing. Don’t call with draws as you might early when getting pot odds, raise with them. This is generally for HU situations, which will be the vast majority of the time. There’s a good chance your opponent is just bluffing at the pot too and missed, so you’ll get a lot of lay downs. And if called, you always have your draw to fall back on.
Blind defense - Another place to get aggressive in the late going is blind defense. You’re seeing it suggested here that you steal with a lot of nothing. Well, others are doing it to you when you’re in the blinds, so you have to make them back off. If you’re just passively giving up your blinds, or calling and folding on the flop often, then you’re just asking for misery. Sometimes you have to play back at the stealer by moving in on them. Sometimes you should do it with some marginal hands, too. Going all-in with 76s is not something you want to do very often, but you have to send a message that you’re not to be F-ed with. If you do make a “backoff” stand with a moderate hand like this, try to do it with a hand where if you’re called, at least your hand is live. So I’d probably rather have 76s than K7o.
Another blind defense tactic is the stop-n-go. Call the steal raisers bet and fire out a good sized bet on any flop. Again, doesn’t matter what your cards are, you’re just hoping the stealer missed and put him on the defensive.
Representing hands - Every once in awhile you want to represent a hand you don’t have and play it like you would if you had that hand. So a club draw on the board and you aint got no clubs. Play it like you made a flush when a third club hits. Again, this is a HU only type play, not for multiway pots and is to be used sparingly. But it’s another way to pick up chips when you don’t have the cards to back them up.
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