A lot of turbo players continue to play too tight for too long and find themselves in the unwanted position of being in push-or-fold mode far too early, Be prepared to start stealing more from late position and with a wider range of hands than usual to keep your head above water. The Middle Stages Come Around Much Fasterīe aware that the middle stages of the tournament come around far more quickly than in a standard structured tournament.

Watch for which opponents have failed to adjust to their more difficult stack sizes and take advantage of them. This is a tricky stack size to play and many players approach it the wrong way by still calling three-bets and making continuation bets with hands they can’t call a shove with. It’s extremely easy to think you’re cruising along only for the blinds to go up and you drop below 20 big blinds. You should be doing this anyway but it’s crucial in turbos and hyper-turbos. Your always only going to be a few minutes away from a jump in the cost per round, so slipping up and losing 10-20% of your stack may not seem much right now, but you could find yourself short stack within a matter of minutes.Īlways keep a eye on your stack size and those of your opponents. By all means be super aggressive with your strong, made hands, but try to create a tighter image because it will come in handy later on when we start getting all-in happy!īe aware that mistakes in faster paced tournaments are compounded and what seems like a small error can end up costing you your tournament life. Adding 75 chips to a 5,000 stack just isn’t really worth it in the long run.Įver heard of the saying tight is right? This is true in tournament poker where conserving chips at the start of the event is more important than accumulating them. This means you shouldn’t be going out of your way to pick up every possible pot. You’ll start with a healthy stack, usually 100-250 big blinds. The early levels of any tournament are almost identical. You can’t simply approach them in the same way as you would an MTT with a standard blind structure.

There are, however, several key differences in the strategy you need to employ to be successful in turbo and hyper-turbo tournaments. Everyone starts with the same number of chips, the same percentage of the field is paid out, and the big money is usually reserved for the top three finishers. All tournaments are, on the surface, the same beast.

Turbo tournament strategy