If you are a cash game player looking to cash in big in tournaments then you must forget about winning hands and focus on winning the tournament. Because most big hand confrontations result in a big pot, whilst you are focused on your amount of big blinds held in your stack your decisions must be about chipping up rather than winning chips. The fundamental difference to cash games is that the chips are not real money so the maximum amount you can lose is your tournament buy-in, and you must accumulate all of the chips to win the tournament rather than just ending play with more than you started with as you do in a cash game. The hands you are dealt will be the same in as in a Texas Hold’em poker cash game, but you will play them very differently.

Both the lack of time and limited losses regardless of your stack size means you can be slightly more speculative and willing to flip to win the tournament in 50/50 spots. This is where luck decides whether you get a big win or not. It is not wrong to take a 60/40 flip for a big finish in a poker tournament. That is how bracelets are won in WSOP events.

In a cash game, for example, you would never fold AA. In a tournament, however, you would have to consider folding if, with three players remaining in a large tournament, a player had a very small stack went all-in and was called with the blinds high. Your Aces are devalued against two players with the possibility of more action in later streets between you and the larger stack. You can move up a spot and go heads up if the larger stacked player wins the hand and retain all of your chips for the heads up battle. The extra chips he wins in this hand will not matter that much because you would still be behind in chips regardless. Many players would consider a fold here, but only if the prize they can win is extremely large for them in terms of their bankroll or personal net worth.

I play my tournaments on bwin.com and it is easy to get into a pattern of going all-in with decent hands in a desperate attempt to get lucky and earn some chips. Your tournament thinking must be extremely focused on learning about your opponents who you are sitting with. It is highly unlikely you will meet regular players in these massive fields enough that you will sit at a table and know most of them immediately. There is no shortcut for watching and observing closely. As I have said before if you reach a point where you have a decision to make and you are not sure about an opponent then you have not been watching closely enough.

Consider your tournament status each round when you get on the button. Do you need to chip up quickly? If you are short enough you may be looking for the right hand with which to shove, or the right person to re-raise off a hand. Look for spots where you can use your position to bully a player that is capable of folding from a hand. Sometimes they will shove and you will have to let go, but many times they will fold. Tournament poker is about learning about your opponents and squeezing chips from them. Your actual hand is not critical, because you must play weaker hands due to the time constraints a tournament puts on you. Waiting for premium hands only is not an option, unfortunately.

Think about what it is you need to achieve in the short term to remain above chip average. If you have a large stack you want to pick up blinds and only engage when you need to. Remember many players shove against a big stack hoping to flip for a double-up. If you are forced to flip for a proportion of your stack then do it with a very strong hand so you have an edge. I prefer slowing down with a big stack but always assess its size against other big stacks, blinds and tournament average.

Hopefully we will get to compete against each other on the bwin.com poker tables and I will rue the day I ever gave you this advice!

By Malcolm Clarke