The key to playing Aces early in a tournament is pot control. You don’t want to put yourself in a position to have to call off your entire stack with “just” Aces (unless it’s preflop, then by all means, go for it!)

Consider the following hand:

You make a raise with pocket Aces and a player in the small blind calls. The flop comes Queen-Ten-Seven. He checks and you make roughly a pot sized bet. He calls. The turn is an Eight.

Immediately after seeing that card, your focus should be on getting one and only one bet in on the turn. What does that mean? It means if he bets, you “just” call, and if he checks you can bet but consider folding to a raise. This concept is known as “pot control”. Right now the board is Queen-Ten-Eight-Seven, which is actually a pretty scary board for when you’re holding pocket Aces. There are a lot of possible two pair, straight and straight draw hands that should bring you some pause. You don’t want to get into a raising war on a board like this and wind up dumping off your entire stack so early in the tournament to someone holding Queen-Ten.

Let’s consider one more example:

You raise with Aces and two players call. The flop is Six-Four-Two. They both check and you make a fairly large bet. One player folds but another player raises you. This should come across as very scary to you. You definitely do not want to re-raise them. There is very little value in that. At the same time, folding is probably way too tight. Yes, it looks like he could possibly have a set, but let’s just call and see what he does on the turn.

You call and the turn comes an Eight. Your opponent leads out for a very large bet again. This is another situation where you’re either going to fold or call, not raise. One idea would be to call and see what happens on the river. If he fires another very large bet on the river, maybe you let go of the Aces. If he checks, it’s quite possible he has something like pocket Nines, but you should still probably check behind since the pot is already big enough and you don’t want to trap yourself.

This article should give you an idea of the mindset to have when playing pocket Aces early in a tournament. The idea is to control the pot size and not get carried away by playing for all of your chips.

High Vig:Buy-in Ratio

“Small stakes” live tournaments (buy-in of $50-$300) are often a terrible proposition because of the huge entry fee. When a casino spreads a $100 tournament, they won’t make much money off of the players unless they charge a very high entry fee. It is not uncommon for casinos to hold a $125 buy-in tournament where $25 of that money is retained by the casino as a fee. This esssentially means 20% of the prize pool disappears before the cards are ever dealt.

Additionally, these smaller buy-in tournaments usually have a bad structure. Casinos don’t want to spend hours and hours worth of resources on this event when they can cut a few corners to make the tournament end quickly. So not only is the entry fee very high, but the tournament structure is so fast that you don’t have ample time to extract a meaningful edge over your opponents.

In general, it would be wise to avoid playing live tournaments with a buy-in of under $200.

Sharky Fields

Some poker tournaments are to be avoided because of the sharky playing field. World Poker Tour (WPT) events are extremely sharky nowadays since online poker rooms no longer send fishy satellite winners to the events. The WPT is now basically filled with good “regulars” who are tough to gain an edge over.

Even the WSOP in Las Vegas is beginning to get quite tough. The Main Event is still very soft, but many of the preliminary events are filled with solid competition. Casual players no longer participate in these events as much as they used to. Recently, a global recession has only aggrivated this issue.

Softer Competition in Live Tournaments

Live tournaments are typically much, much easier than online tournaments. Online tournaments are filled with a lot of savvy, experienced young players whereas live tournaments have plenty of donkeys who would probably never play online for fear that it’s rigged. A typical $500 buy-in live tournament will usually be as soft as a $10 online tournament. No joke, the live events are really that easy.

Deeper Stacks Live

Since live tournaments progress at a slower pace than online tournaments, players usually grow impatient and lose all their chips before they really needed to. This coupled with the easier competition makes for deeper stacks in live events. The average stack in an online tournament is typically 20-40 big blinds. In a live tournament, it will commonly be over 50.

Top Heavier Payouts in Live Events

The payout structure of a poker tournament can have a significant impact on one’s strategy. The payout in online tournaments is usually “flatter”, meaning more places get paid more money. There’s a pretty simple reason for this: online poker rooms have no limitations paying out as many places as they like, whereas a live tournament payout involves paperwork and man hours. For that reason, live tournaments typically a.) pay a smaller percentage of the prize pool and b.) pay a larger percentage of the prize pool to the top 3 finishers. The name of the game in live tournaments is to play for the win whereas online it can sometimes be sensible to essentially give up on trying to win and instead shoot for 5th place.

Tells

Live tournament tells are something that is not in play in an online tournament. Since you cannot see your opponents in an online tournament, how they’re behaving is left up to a guess. Savvy players can have a bigger edge in live tournaments because of the added value of spotting tells.

Small Stakes Tournaments

The smallest buy-in live tournaments will still cost at least $50 to enter. Online tournaments can be played for mere pennies. One great way to gain poker tournament experience is to play small stakes online tournaments. No matter how bad you are, you can’t lose too much in these events whereas if you were trying to hone your skills in a live tournament, it could cost a small fortune before you were remotely decent.

Talk

It’s a risky move, but talking during a hand can be a great way to get players to pay you off more than they otherwise might have. For example, if you flop a flush draw, when you complete your flush on the turn, you could say something like, “that’s an interesting card.” This will get the player more involved in the hand and more interested in seeing your two cards. After all, what could you be possibly holding that would get you to open your mouth like that?

Show Them a Tilty Card

In the World Series of Poker this year, I made a raise with Five-Two suited because… why not? The player in the big blind re-raised me. He had been playing tight and I had also been playing tight, so I figured he probably had a very strong hand in this situation. However, his mistake was that he didn’t re-raise large enough to get me to fold and I knew that if the flop came favorably (like Ten-Two-Two), he might lose a lot of chips to me, so I called. The flop was Ace-Seven-Six, which was no help to my hand. He bet, but the size of his bet screamed, “please just fold” to me. So I decided to take a stab at the pot and raised his bet. He got very flustered, said something like, “everytime!!” and showed pocket Kings as he folded.

In this instance, I could have slid my cards to the dealer and collected the chips, but I knew I could emotionally derail this player even further if I showed him the Two. So I did. Of course, he went bizerk, “how can you call a re-raise there with Ace-Two?! You are so bad!” This went on and on for a few minutes signifying that his mind was not in the right place.

Sexualize Things

The best way to distract poker players is to get them to start thinking with the wrong organ. There are so many ways this can be done. You can just chatter about the hot strippers you hung out with last night, or blatantly hit on a girl giving a massage to another player at your table. Or you can even tell stories about the hot Canadian girls you did a three-way with. However you do it, the goal is the same in each case: get them turned on and distracted from poker.

When someone says “I’ll show you my hand if you fold,” it’s usually because they want you to fold. Consider the player though. Does he seem like a complete square, or does he seem savvy enough to run some mindgame on you? If it’s the former and he makes this statement, he is probably in a state of despartation hoping that you will fold.

Talking during a hand about the hand is actually a violation of tournament rules in most places. The poker world can thank 2006 World Champion Jamie Gold for this. En route to victory, Gold regularly tipped off players about his hand hoping to induce them into doing what he wanted. Here is an example of a dialogue that is no longer considered appropriate at the poker table:

Player 1: “I can beat a small pocket pair.”

Player 2: “Well I don’t have one of those.”

Player 1: “So it sounds like we’re racing then, huh?”

Player 2: “Yup… you sure you want to do that for all of your chips?”

This type of beat-around-the-bush style of conversation is not only unacceptable, but it’s also just downright pathetic. Play the game and don’t try to get someone to hold your hand before you make a big decision. After all, poker is gambling.

When you are faced with a tough decision, it can be advantageous to ask the player, “will you show if I fold?” Most often, the player will remain motionless. However, sometimes they’ll eagerly take you up on your offer and say, “yea, I’ll show.” If they say this, I would be inclined to think they want me to fold and are willing to comply with any request I have in order to make that happen.

An additional way of attempting to extract information out of a player during a hand is to ask them how many chips they have remaining. If they are calm, collected and confident in responding to your question, it probably means one of two things. A.) they’re a “regular” and no longer get nervous about the proceedings at the table or B.) they have a strong hand and are more than happy to give you whatever information you might require in order to put all of your chips into the pot.

However, if a player is very uncertain and seemingly in a state of incapability after this request, it could mean that they’re so overwhelmed with the possibility of busting out of the tournament that they cannot even count their chips properly. This could be the small bit of information you need to choose to put the rest of your chips into the pot.

Looking at Chips

When a player looks at their chips immediately after a card is dealt, they almost always like their hand a lot. This is a very reliable tell which makes it worthwhile to watch a person’s face when the cards come out. If they immediately glance at their chips but then decide to check, you should probably check as well as they’re probably trying to trap you.

Staring at Communal Cards

This is sort of the opposite of the “looking at chips” tell. If a player just stares at the communal cards once they’ve been dealt, they are probably pretty weak. Players will stare while trying to make sense of the hand or possibly muster the courage to bluff. When an opponent stares at the community cards for several seconds, it’s probably safe to try to buy the pot with a bet.

Leaning Back in Chair

When a player leans back in their chair or does anything else which signifies that they’re feeling very comfortable, then it’s because they’re feeling very comfortable! If a player bets all-in and then leans back and relaxes in their chair, you should probably give them credit for having a pretty big hand. Usually a player who bluffs all-in will not be able to relax enough to lean back in their chair and might even start to lean forward and sit up straighter.

Chatter

A talkative player is a confident player. If a player bets all-in and you’re having a hard time deciding whether or not to call, start talking to them. If they say nothing, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have a bad hand, but if they start talking back at you, it could very well mean they have a strong hand. Then again, it can also mean they have a very weak hand. The point is, they know where they stand in the hand: they’re either ahead or behind and it’s unlikely that they’re not certain which one it is.

Looking Around

A reliable tell for a player who had a very strong hand is when they look around the room after making a bet. This is a subconscious response of trying to appear innocuous. “Look at me, I’m looking around the room not even paying attention to the hand, how dangerous could I be?” In fact, the opposite is usually true.