How Not to Lose Your Shirt in Small No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em

In the last, adrenaline-filled, days of a Texas No-Limit Hold ‘Em tournament, when the blinds are slowly eating away at your stack and your fingers are about to fall off into poker oblivion, it is understandable why a lot of players cringe when crunch time finally comes. Don’t let that happen to you. Remember that your emotions can totally shatter your hopes of winning and sticking to rather mechanical yet logical approaches to the game will get you the top.

Aggression should start to show up here. Waiting for premium or good cards like A-10 and K-Q will munch up your stack. And once you do get them, you’ll probably only have about three to eight rounds left to play! That’s why you should be bold and aggressive from the first blind level.

Quite frankly, the difference between first and second place in a Texas No-Limit Hold ‘Em tournament is like the difference between being an Einstein and aisteel: you’ll still get to happy with either one. But if you’re in a tournament where first place earns you tenner, you’ve just made a profit equal to the tournament’s top prize. So whatever your tournament strategy, aim for first place every time.

Once you reach the later stages of a tournament and its second blind level, things will start to change. Because the cost of entering this level, you’ll need to be more selective. This is especially true for beginner players because they will be so anxious to double up that they’ll call almost every hand no matter how weak their hole cards are. Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because you’ve seen someone play that hand that you are automatically going to do the same. You want to discourage other players from calling you in the first place. This is the essence of a no-limit hold ‘em strategy.

At the start of the tournament, you should be very selective with your hands and risk little chips by going for small raises. As the game goes on and the blinds go up, you should mix it up and be more aggressive. If you are in the chip lead, go for the big raises in the third blind level. Play tight, and when you get a good hand, go for the big pots.

As the fourth blind level approaches, the size of your stack will be a factor to the size of the blinds. If you are low on chips and deep in the tournament, you should wait for a good hand and work your way up stages by stage. If you are the chip leader and you can see the blinds, go for it. You may not win the hand, but you will end up close enough to be able to finish in the money if you manage to double up.

From the panen138, you can take a risk and push a small raise of about three times the big blind if you are only holding a pair of connectors. Most of the time you will get a call. This will take you to the bar, where the blinds will be too high to consider a blind steal, and you can at least guarantee that you will see some flops with an outside raise.

If you are deep, you can consider taking a shot for the Heisman when you have a half to an even bigger gap in stack sizes. Most players are not deep, and even the ones that are will likely have a tough time moving their chips in and out of the tournament.

Now that you have some chips in the pot, you can take a chance at stealing the blinds. Try to keep from doing this in the first few rounds as it can cost you too much. In the first rounds, there is little risk in attempting a blind steal because the stacks are small. In the second, third and fourth rounds, you want to be fairly tight and get a read on your opponents. If you move too loose in the later rounds, you can lose a lot of chips that your opponents will look to protect.