Today’s Texas Hold'em Strategy is about tournament play, position, mediocre cards, and what to expect. Let’s start with an absolute, unarguable fact of tournament play, there is no poker strategy that is going to guarantee you a win; the best you can do with a good Texas Hold'em Strategy is get an edge over the competition. This is similar to somebody who is a great hitter in the game of baseball. Their genetic gifts are going to give them an advantage, but in reality they are still going to strike out two-thirds of the time. They are usually guessing about where the pitcher is going to throw the ball; the guess is based on their knowledge of the situation and what the pitcher historically likes to do, but it is still just a guess. When a baseball is coming at you at up to one hundred miles per hour, there is not a lot of time to make adjustments. Tournament poker isn’t really much different.
If you are in a situation where you are in the middle to late rounds of a tournament, and have been dealt a hand like a K/10, or an A/9, you are now faced with a decision; especially if you happen to be in one of the early seats. You can either play these cards or fold. The later you are in the tournament, the more playable these cards are. If you choose to play them though, half measures won’t do, you need to commit to the hand like a batter committing to what they think is an impending breaking ball.
From your early position seat, if you simply call the big blind before the flop, you are not projecting much strength, and look like a guy who is just trying to survive until the flop. If the late position guy gives allows you to do this by simply calling themselves, you have been given a time for adjustment similar to the split second a batter might get to adjust to the pitch. What is more likely is they will raise. In this case you re-raise all-in. Unless they one of the people still left in the hand is holding a pair of Kings or Aces, they are going to have to account for the possibility that you have scored one of those hands, and that your original call was just a poker strategy to get more money into the pot. Now they are going to have to bet either a significant portion of their stack, or their very tournament life on the possibility that you are bluffing.
If somebody does call your bet, you are not yet up a creek, because your hand still has possibilities, and a good card on the flop, turn, or river will make your poker strategy look like sheer genius.
That is the Texas Hold'em Strategy for today.
