While gambling is always going to be associated with loss, you can actually turn the tables to your advantage if you know and correctly use a few strategies.
In poker, when you play deepstacked, you at least want the biggest of the big hands, and fortunately for you, Ace King Suited is one of the premium starting hands you can play at preflop.
When deciding whether to play deepstack you should ask yourself 2 questions:
- What do you have at your disposal in terms of hand strength?
- What do you need to have a strong hand to play deepstack risk free?
A hand such as A-K suited is the second option because you need to have at least a pair on the flop in order to qualify for the next level of blinds and antes. Of course, the hand strength is subject to some risk because you may not make a hand or may even run into two pair or a set.
The best way therefore to play A-K suited is to open up the AK preflop and see if you can get any action. If you hit a flop of say 8-9-10 or a set then you will be able to get a lot of value out of the hand and hopefully land a big hand.
You will probably not be in a position where you can re-steal the blinds from your opponents and remove their support completely, especially early in a tournament, so you will need to get a big hand and take action.
If you think you have the best hand, do not bet the size of your stack. Instead, bet 5-10% of your stack, or in other words, bet with your bankroll.
You only have three choices: fold, call or check. You can decide not to call but conceivably, you can call if you want to, in order to pick up the blinds. If you decide to call, consider folding if your opponents decide to go in with a large stack.
The objective for you is to obtain first through third position. In order to do this, you need to be very aggressive in the early stages of the tournament. Keep in mind that the blinds are coming around almost every round.
In the first stage you can open your 3xBB raise in 2 scenarios:
- If you have a stack of less than 10BBs, in which case, you want to control the game by any means.
- If you have a stack of between 15-20BBs, then you need to build a large stack in order to control the game during the middle stages. During all other stages, you should be playing TAG (tight aggressive).
With a stack of less than 10BBs, you will want to open with a 3xBB raise. In cases where you bang out a pre-flop raise (almost always with a small stack) then you should consider either limping or giving up the hand. You should then proceed to fold all but strong hands.
With a stack of between 15-20BBs, you will want to keep away from the action as much as possible and try to pick up blinds. Blinds are a very important number because you will not be able to raise large amounts of chips from short stacks. Instead, you will want to earn blinds while waiting for a situation to arise in which you can risk your whole stack on a hand without large risks.
There are 2 general types of opponents you will find at the start of a tournament:
- Lottery tickets
- Middle stacked opponents
Your goal in the early stages of a tournament is to play tight and selective. If you are playing from a low stack/without a big stack, then you want to play more aggressive and pick up the blinds.
In the middle stacks situation, you really want to pick your spots and be even more selective. You still want to pick your spots, but try to avoid super-sized pots. Way too many people want to go all-in and try to win the tournament in the first few rounds. This is your chance to shine and show your cards. You don’t want to have tournament entries in your bankroll to be so Sunny Dlayd does not begin his entrances in rounds 1 and 2.
There is a lot of information in the above documentation so I will only touches on the important aspects of gauging your opponent. You want to look for a deeper understanding of how your opponent plays. Maybe if he has never played in an online afapoker tournament before, he will only play from a comfortable limit.
When you play a tournament you always want to increase your respect and loosen up your play. Lot of players will do this because it is low risk.