Winning a Poker Tournament

Allow me to tell you a story about a good friend of mine. I have to say she is an excellent poker player — yes, a good female poker player — and have won countless games against other players in various occasions. The one thing she never actually succeeds in doing is working her way through poker tournaments. I didn’t understood the reasons why she never go further than the second or third round until recently; being a great poker player is simply not enough to win a poker tournament. I had a chance to see her playing the WSOP day-2 and I can clearly see she is a short-term kind of player. She entered the tournament with no strategy, and focuses more on winning the current table she’s in.

If you are serious about entering a poker tournament, you must first realize that tournaments are long-term poker games with a lot of tables and countless opponents to beat before actually making to the final nine. Winning one hand at a time may be a good micro strategy, but you need to look at the bigger picture at the same time. Surviving a table just won’t cut it; you need to gather enough strength (read: chips) to survive the next round. Even if you survive the day, starting the next day with small amount of chips will get you eliminated before you land a good hand.

You must come up with a good strategy. You can be aggressive when you are confident with your hand to score some big wins. Keeping your game tight is good, but you still need to be irrational if not random from time to time to avoid letting your opponents read your plays like an open book. With a proper strategy, you will be advancing further and winning a poker tournament just like that.