Of course there are many variables that will cause you to shift stratagies, but here are some good basic suggestions:

Early Stages:

- From any position regardless of anything else, raise (or go All-In) with AA, KK, AKs. If you are re-raised you are going to have a choice to make. It depends on where you are chip-wise in relation to the opponents at the table. The AKs is a possible fold if you will go all in with calling the re-raise. If a short stack raises you make sure you put him all-in if he is not already. One option with these hands is to call a raise if you are the last to act and no other raises can happen. For instance, you are the big blind with AA and the first player to act puts in a big raise. When it gets around to you, there are no other raises and it is up to you to just call and see the flop.

- From mid to late position with no more than 4x the minimum raise in front of you add AKo AQs, AQo and QQ to betting big before the flop. Otherwise call a raise up to 20% of your stack, otherwise fold.

- From mid to late position raise to 4x the minimum bet or 20% or your stack for all pairs down to 88. You can also play off-suit paint this way, AJ, AT, KQ, KJ. Fold to re-raises.

- From early position limp with these same pairs and paint, also add suited connectors (in any position) down to 98s. Also limp from early position with suited Aces or Kings. You might also want to consider one-gap suited hands down to J9.

Let the fish get picked off… be patient and wait!

An alternative strategy of playing more flops is advocated by the new breed of poker players such as Phil Ivey. They play a lot of flops early on, and when the flop hits them hard, they seek to clean up a lot of extra chips and build a stack that they can bully with. This style works well if the tournament starts you out with plenty of chips (100 big blinds or more).

Post-Flop Play (both pocket cards play):

- With a pair and over cards on the board, a 4 flush or 4 straight, bet 2x the minimum bet, call raises up to 4x the minimum bet or 20% of your stack. Fold to bigger bets.

- With top pair or 2 pair and an unpaired board bet 4x the minimum but fold to any raise more than 50% of your stack unless you have top 2 pair and there is no chance of a flush or straight. Consider re-raising all in if this happens.

- With trips, straights, full houses, etc. try to slow play after the flop. If you don’t get any action put in some big raises and end there.

I hope this gives you a good idea of how to play your starting hands in the early stages of a tournament. I’ll be covering the middle and late stage in other posts.

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