How Tournaments Differ From Ring or Cash Games
Playing in a poker tournament is very different from playing in a regular ring or cash game. Although basic poker skills, such as starting hand selection, ability to estimate odds and outs, reading players, are still important in tournaments, there are key differences. For starters, your loss is limited to the price of buying-in (what it costs to enter and play in a tournament). Unlike cash games, after you're eliminated from the tournament, that's it; you can't buy more chips and keep playing.
Playing tournament poker requires different betting strategy than playing in regular cash games. Tournaments are all about survival, chip accumulation, and making it to the final table. As such, you worry less about pot odds and whether your bet is getting the correct overlay (meaning, the odds are in your favor), and more about the odds of drawing the winning hand. Also tournament play requires a bit more strategy focused on bluffing, stealing pots, and other maneuvers aimed at helping you accumulate chips.
In almost all tournaments the betting structure is such that the antes, bring-ins, or blind bets increase at predetermined intervals. As a result, if you become short stacked (low on chips), you often have to adjust your strategy and become more aggressive; otherwise, you risk being eliminated from the tournament because you haven't enough time to make a come-back before the blind bets eat up your chips. In cash games, if you become short stacked, you can tighten up your play, become more conservative, and just sit back and wait for premium hands.
As a result of betting structure, the experience of playing in a tournament is in a large part influenced by two variables: "How many chips do you start with?" and "How long are the rounds before antes, bring-in, or blind bets increase?"
A general rule is the shorter the rounds and the fewer starting the chips, the speedier the tournament. The faster the tournament progresses, the more the tournament favors luck over skill because shorter rounds limit players' ability to maneuver. With shorter rounds, players are forced to act on more marginal hands and hope luck delivers. The longer the intervals between rounds, the more time players have to wait for position, act on premium hands, and generally make more tactical moves.
Most tournaments start players with somewhere between $800 and $6000 in chips. If players start with more rather than fewer chips (for example, $3,000), and the blind bets start out at $15/$30 and go up in 30 to 45 minute intervals, you can assume this tournament will be slow. However, if play starts with half that number of chips (or $1,500) and the blind bets remain the same but increase every 10 minutes, assume this tournament will be played much faster.
All tournaments make available to players the betting structure of the tournament so players can study it before the tournament or have it with them at the tournament table. You want to stay aware of the time in a tournament and continually anticipate when the blinds or antes will increase. Just before they increase a level, be on guard for short stacks that might try to make a move.
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