Managing your Chip Stack in Free Poker Tournaments
Whether you are new to playing in free poker tournaments or not, you may wonder how to play your chip stacks. If so, then read this guide which will help you decide how to play the stacks from short to big.
We start off by playing with short stacks. If you are a short stack play as tight as possible but play aggressive. By this I mean do not just call push all in or raise and force your opponents to a decision. Just by stealing blinds and antes (when applicable) you can prolong your tournament life as a short stack. There is no advantage to trying to trap as a short stack seeing you are risking a lot more than your opponents.
Now we look at the average stack. This is where you should play your average game. Avoid changing your game as you have enough chips to be able to keep on the table. This is a good position to be in, as you have plenty of chips to keep the bigger stacks on their toes, and also plenty to cover the small stacks. Its worth trying to steal the blinds at this level.
Finally the big stack. There are two ways to approach this. You can play extremely tight and wait for smaller stacks to be eliminated to improve your position. By this I mean playing only strong starting hands. The other approach is to be aggressive and force others into tournament life or death decisions. You can get away by moving with marginal hands in this case.
However, remember that playing aggressive can cause you to let others back into the tournament by doubling them up with marginal hands. So play wisely if you go this route.
By knowing how to play each type of chip stack should enable you to stay in the game longer and hopefully start winning some tournaments and increase your winnings.
Hopefully my tips will be of benefit to you. Its worth playing as many free poker tournaments to perfect your skills when playing online poker.
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