Online Tournament Play
A few friends and I were watching some poker tournament hand histories play out in a simulator posted by Annette15 (Annette Obrestad). She is considered quite a strong online tournament poker player and was made famous by winning a 180 person tournament without ever looking at her cards.
The important lesson to learn here is that position is almost more important than the cards you hold. And it might help you at least pay attention to your opponents a bit more. But watching her play a tournament all the way through and seeing her cards was pretty interesting. She essentially played basic strategy. She never limped, she never played out of position, with exception of a few huge hands, her raises were almost always 3x the BB, she didn’t speculate with questionable hands like kq, or a,10, and she played aggressive from the Button and the blinds, often squeezing with a large bet if it’s been limped.
Her play also brought to mind the basic elements of an online tournament. Online tournaments are known for not starting very deep-stacked. Even though 1500 chips would be 50 BB’s at the 15/30 blind level, the pots get overplayed and you have to be somewhat conservative or you can get down to 30 BB’s quickly. The blinds don’t really play well with the chip stacks until you reach the middle stages of the tournament. Sure, some people are deep and some are short, but the average chip stack becomes more playable. This is when you can open your game a little bit and try and make some position bluffs and squeeze plays. If you lose a few bets by trying a re-steal, it probably won’t affect your bottom line, whereas a failed re-steal early might cripple you.
Late in a poker tournament things kind of revert to early playability; the blinds and antes get to be so big that you find yourself tightening up once again and looking for good cards to play aggressively in position. A misstep here could cost you your tournament, so any big re-steal is risky. By watching Annette15, you get a good idea of what kinds of cards and plays you should be making in early, middle, and late stages of a tournament.
