Poker Basics - Tips for your first tournament

You cannot expect to know it all at the start for for newbies playing their first MTT, try these tips to get you started.

1. Play tight-aggressive

Tight means that you shouldn't play all the cards that are dealt to you. There are a lot of starting hands that are just as bad as they look. However, there are also hands that might look quite good to an inexperienced player but are actually bad to play as well, for instance king-jack.

After the flop you shouldn't get married to any pair that you might hit. You can save a lot of money when you develop a feeling for spots in which you are simply beat or in which the bets are simply too high to continue playing.

Choosing the right starting hands is already half the battle and many of your opponents at the lowest limits (in tournaments the amount of the buy-in) make a lot of mistakes when it comes to that. They simply play too many hands or they don't know when to get out of the way with certain cards that actually look quite nice in their eyes.

Aggressive means that you should always try to get the maximum with your strong hands. Bet big when you have a strong hand and don't start slow playing these hands (playing as if you had a weak hand in order to lure your opponents into betting).

2. Apply the "Call 20" rule

Paired starting hands can be an opportunity to win big pots with a small investment. If one or more players have already joined a hand before the flop, it can be a very profitable move to just call as well.

As a rule of thumb the amount you would have to pay in order to call should be no more than 5% of your chip stack (meaning you should have 20 times as many chips left) and your opponents should have a similar or even bigger stack.

If you hit a set (three of a kind) on the flop, you should then of course continue playing the hand aggressively. If you don't hit anything, you can simply give up without having invested many chips.

3. Limping is not an option

A common beginner's mistake: You're holding a speculative hand like 98 and you would like to have a glance at the flop. The cheapest way to do that is simply calling before the flop (limping), which means only paying the big blind instead of raising. That's not a good play, though!

A limp might appear enticing but it doesn't make sense in most situations. Instead, it makes much more sense to enter the hand with a raise. This will either allow you to win the pot already before the flop or it will ensure that you are able to convincingly represent a strong hand on the flop - because you've already shown strength preflop.

4. Use continuation bets

When you've raised before the flop and one or two players decided to call your raise, you should bet half the pot on the flop. Such a bet is called a continuation bet.

The following requirements have to be met for that:

• Apart from you, there are no more than two other players in the hand
• You've represented a strong hand before the flop and entered the hand with a raise
• Another player hasn't raised on the flop yet

To learn more about getting started in MTTs check out this article or watch the video below:

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