The final hand always gets the most attention. It could be the last hand of a grueling heads-up battle to determine a million dollar tournament winner. Or it could just be the hand you busted out on in your local Wednesday night tournament. Either way, chances are that you (and The Final Hand|977|3.95|USD|| maybe a [...]

Cash games tend to be relatively static. The blinds don’t change. The stack sizes can vary, but they tend to vary from fairly deep to really deep. And after any hand you can get up from the table and cash your chips in for dollars. So each chip is always The Three Stages Of A [...]

In tournament play, you make decision after decision that could result in risking all your chips. You’ll make at least one decision for all your chips in virtually every tournament you play. And in most tournaments you’ll make multiple all-in decisions. Whenever you choose to go for it, and you lose, Taking An All-In Risk|917|3.95|USD|| [...]

It happens to us all more times than we’d like to count. We build a nice pot with pocket kings and then the flop comes and… BAM! There’s the ace. The way you handle it depends a lot on your opponents, the stack sizes, and more. Let’s look at a Pocket Kings Flop An Ace… [...]

In tournament play, you make decision after decision that could result in risking all your chips. You’ll make at least one decision for all your chips in virtually every tournament you play. And in most tournaments you’ll make multiple all-in decisions. Whenever you choose to go for it, and you lose, it’s easy to second-guess [...]

I just finished reading my first poker strategy book in quite a while (probably the first one since The Mathematics of Poker). It’s a tournament book published by Matthew Hilger’s company, Dimat, and it’s good. The book has a long title and an even longer author list, so I’m going to make a new paragraph [...]

Many tournament players make a consistent mistake. They focus too much on conserving their chips and preserving their “tournament life,” and in doing so they leave big pots hanging out to dry. I see it frequently when I play tournaments. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. The blinds are 200-400, and the big [...]

Cash games tend to be relatively static. The blinds don’t change. The stack sizes can vary, but they tend to vary from fairly deep to really deep. And after any hand you can get up from the table and cash your chips in for dollars. So each chip is always Q&A #107: Classifying Tournament Stages|455|3.95|USD|| [...]

Am I a donkey? That’s today’s question from zoomraker. My answer is a definite no, but I would have played the hands he submitted a bit differently. The first hand is a fairly common top pair postflop situation from a $0.50 buy-in no-limit tournament: Instead of quoting the hand history directly, I’ll Q&A #96: A [...]

If you haven’t been following the recent discussion about short stacks versus deep stacks in tournaments, please first read How Short Should You Go and How Short I Think You Should Go. In the comments portion of the second article, a discussion of ICM was brought up. JJS said: Ed Short Stacks In Tournaments, ICM, [...]