Amateur Tournament Poker Mistakes You Need to Avoid

Poker tournaments are a great draw for beginners due to their relative low risk and ‘value for money’. A lot of beginners are scared of cash poker because they feel they can lose it all. Of course, this is untrue and you can only lose whatever you have in front of you but they see people losing their cars on TV and somehow think it could happen to them.

Regardless, tournaments do offer value for money in terms of: once you have bought in, you generally get plenty of bang for your buck unless you run into a nasty cooler early on.

Another great aspect of poker tournaments is the very tasty looking prize pools. I remember my first tournament success. It was an $11 tournament online with over 10,000 runners. Fast forward 14 hours and I was heads up playing for a top prize of $17,000. I won’t bore you with the bad beat story, but I ended up getting second place for a hair over $10,000. It was an amazing feeling and the thrill of going deep in a tournament has yet to be replicated for me.

Stick to the following advice, and you too could find yourself at the final table playing for sums of money you could only have dreamed of.

#1 Don’t Push Every Edge

Cash games and tournaments differ on so many levels, but perhaps the biggest difference is the importance of survival in poker tournaments. In a cash game, you can happily pile your chips in the middle as a slight favorite. If things don’t work out you simply reload and go again. In a tournament, however, once you’re done you’re done. Risking your entire stack should only be done when absolutely necessary. Early on it is often better to pass on small edges in favor of guaranteeing your survival in the tournament.

Of course, as the tournament goes on this switches on you. As your stack gets shorter in relation to the blinds, you need to look for opportunities to get your chips in, even a slight favorite will do at this point. If you wait too long and get too short, then you have no fold equity and will be called by all kinds of garbage and sometimes by multiple opponents - dramatically reducing your chances of winning.

#2 You're Not Durrrr

The majority of poker players will have watched some poker on TV before stumping up the cash for a poker tournament. They witness the heavily edited footage and watch poker superstars like Phil Ivey and Fedor Holz play every other hand and run some amazing bluffs, and they try to emulate that.

This is a bad move on so many levels. The early stages of a tournament are rarely shown in these broadcasts, and when they are, it is usually a made-for-TV tournament that starts with very shallow stacks in relation to the blinds which forces the action.

In the majority of tournaments the opposite is true. You will most likely start the tournament with a boat load of chips. Most of the pots will be worthless compared to your stack size, so the best thing to do is just be patient, fold your garbage, and PAY ATTENTION. Watch your opponents as they look at their cards, handle their chips, when the flop comes down, when they’re facing a big bet etc. You will learn much more doing this than by staring at your phone or playing every pot.

#3 Don’t Get Stuck in First Gear

This may seem contradictory but there comes a point when #2 goes out of the window. After a few levels, the blinds will have jumped a tad and antes will be introduced. At this point your stack size is much smaller in relation to the blinds regardless of whether or not you have won chips in the early stages.

Now is the time to get aggressive and take down some pots. By this time, you will have been steadily folding like a machine and built up a great image of the biggest nit at the table. That image is for nothing if you don’t take advantage. Look to start stealing pots in position and don’t be afraid to fire bets without much of a hand when facing few opponents. They are likely to respect your aggression thanks to your patience in the earlier levels.

#4 It is Not All About You

This is perhaps geared a little more to live tournaments. When playing online, it is very easy to see how many chips you have, the average stack and what the blinds are. When playing live, a lot of players get themselves in a state when they have a bunch of chips in front of them. They make all kinds of bet sizing errors and generally have no idea what is going on.

Always be aware of how many big blinds you have. This is easy to work out, simply divide your stack by the big blind. Once you get around 20 blinds or below, you are in dangerous territory. You need to stop making speculative calls preflop and look for an opportunity to get your chips in. If you have an active player raising a lot, consider shoving all-in over their raise with a wider range of hands. You don’t have to be super strong here. Broadway hands, high Aces and pairs above nines will work.

There are two parts to this story. Just as important as knowing your own stack is knowing your opponents too. If you have a big stack, you might look to steal the blinds in late position, which is great, I love your thinking. However, this is not a good idea if the guy in the big blind only has eight blinds left. He can very easily shove all in and the price will be too good to pass.

#5 It’s Hammertime

The bubble is the point in a tournament every player hopes to reach. We refer to it as the bubble when we are a few eliminations away from the payouts. For the big stack, it is one of the best times to accumulate chips, but for the shallow stacks it is probably the most stressful part of the whole tournament.

Trust me, busting out on the bubble is not nice. You have been at it for hours, can almost taste the cash and before you know it you are out the door with your tail between your legs. Sometimes it is unavoidable and just one of those things, but other times people lose their minds on the bubble and cost themselves a nice little payday.

OK, so if you are a short stack and you are VERY close to the bubble, you should fold everything but premium hands. I know this feels intuitively wrong, but there is no reason to bust out of the tournament on the bubble just to try steal a few chips. Either wait for your monster or fold your way into the money - there's no shame in that!

If you are lucky enough to be approaching the bubble with a big stack, then be sure to make full advantage of it. The majority of shorter stacks are playing as advised above, so you can just pummel them repeatedly until the bubble bursts. Literally don’t stop stealing their blinds until they tell you otherwise. I don’t mean verbally here either! Until they play back at you, just beat them down. Other big stacks are likely to stay out of the way while you’re doing this. They won’t want to get involved and risk all of their stack on the bubble. If they do play back at you, then you can assume they’re strong and fold everything that isn’t a monster again.

Slowing down as a big stack on the bubble is fatal. This is your chance to pick up all the scared money and amass a stack that is capable of making a run at the final table and beyond.

So there you have it, five mistakes to avoid when playing poker tournaments as a beginner, as well as some advice to help you avoid them. If you have any more tips for our readers then let’s hear em. Use the comment section below.