I've returned to live tournament poker after a 12-year absence, and I'm still quite a bit rusty. So I read Doyle Brunson's no-limit section in Super System 2 and tried to plug a few leaks, namely not playing aggressively enough and having too tight a range.

This past Friday I played at BestBet Jacksonville's $150 tourney, T10,000 to start with 30-minute levels. Wound up being 66 entries and busted out in 16th place. My plan after reading Brunson's ideas on no-limit was to play my bigger hands more aggressively and not be afraid to play decent drawing hands.

Well, that plan largely went out the window as I never once saw AA, KK, QQ, JJ, or AK. Constant junk like 2-7, 4-9, etc. So what kind of moves can you make when you're card-dead? I realize that's a question that has a lot of "it depends" answers, but I'm hoping for some general answers, as it's another hole I need to plug.

short of writing an essay on what's changed in 12 years:

your image when card-dead is tight: so start stealing and re-stealing with a wider range is possible. if you're completely card dead it's essential.

while it's a mistake to call/limp behind with weaker dominated hands, it can often be OK to raise and reraise with lighter holdings, strengthening your repped range and making it possible to barrel post adding fold equity to any actual equity (weak draws, mid/bottom pairs that can become 2pr/trips etc). and by lighter, i mean get out of your comfort zone: J8s, K9s, A3s are potential light 3bet hands.

be prepared to play post and follow up wider pre-ranges with cbets, especially when the board is ragged and should miss opponent defending ranges. don't just miss the flop and give up.

keep a careful eye on stacks and ensure that you start lifting your level of aggression before you get down to 20BB, not after. your fold equity vanishes quickly after 20BB and can often be non-existent below 10BB unless all stacks are tiny in fast structure events.

If you're card dead, it's hard and there's sometimes not a lot you can do - this is one of the reasons I very rarely play live now. Oldsilver gives good tips though but sometimes it's just not your day.

When you multi-table online, you realise how many tourneys that you are just completely card dead and don't really get a chance.

I think the main thing is to not let a tourney like that effect you going forward into other tourneys - you'll get dealt hands and the world's really not against you!

The good news is I did win just about every hand that went to the river. I had a dilemma when there was a raise, a caller, and a guy who had A-A the previous hand announced he got it again and said he'll just call this time. I played with him enough to know he was telling the truth and I threw my 5-5 away; it would have cost me almost all my chips. Sure enough he had A-A and I would have flopped a set. Another guy to my right kept getting dealt A-K (5 times I counted), KK twice and suited connectors virtually the whole game and played a ton of hands. But he got busted out when his flopped set of 2s got flushed on the river.

I did notice there didn't seem to be any really bad players at all, contrary to what I faced back in the early 2000s at Grand Casino in Biloxi (may it RIP).

Have a wide open range in general with antes. Use tools like equilab to come up with some per positions. I don't really randomly add hands to my open range because I've folded for a while.

For me, the biggest change in how I play that has helped me do better in tournaments is recognizing opportunities to steal and re-steal in the middle stages. (once antes kick in)

You can very often accumulate chips regardless of cards by identifying players who will often fold to aggression, either because they defend their blinds poorly or are easily pushed off of hands they open with pre-flop.

you will need to open up your steal and re-steal %, so light opens, 3bs and reshoves in the right spots.

The key to this is timing, choose spots that you percieve will have a high success % in getting the bluff through as this will maximise your EV. Generally what you want to do is bluff with a low frequency, but when you do, do so in spots where the percieved success rate is high. When you bluff with a low freq your opponents should be giving you decent amount of credit for a hand so this will increase your chances for your bluff getting through.

Personally I try to play a range that has a 80 / 20 Value to bluff ratio. Both your value and bluff ranges should compliment each other well, ie: because you are bluffing 20% of the time you should get more action on your value range and because you are bluffing 20% of the time you are winning pots where you shouldn't have, making your hand sample size work harder than your opponents, as they are folding hands in their value range they should have won.

wait for a hand
wait for a spot to use your tight image

repeat

Dumb question, but can you do this with garbage, say 2-8o? Or should you wait for something like (un)suited connectors or one-gappers?

personally I try to have a hand that has at least some value postflop, so I wont bluff with garbage hands like 82,j2,95o etc etc, but just about anything suited and somewhat connected are pretty good like k5s, j8s, T8o, 97o all from late / mid position are great hands to include in your bluffing range.

Hands like T8s while they dont have excellent SDV compared to AK etc are awesome because they have great 'barrel equity' you can barrel when you think your opponents missed which should be often (66% of the time) and you can keep barrelling as your hand picks up outs. If fact much of your profit from these types of hands comes from barrelling boards and winning the pot without a showdown.

If you are card dead, use your image to bluff 3-bet.

This is true. I still see utterly horribad plays especially short stacked in mid/late stages , but in a general sense the standard of live low stakes (up to $500) mtt poker has improved a great deal, even in the last 5 years.

One thing I keep in mind as I am grinding thru a string of bad starting hands is that as the blinds go up and M decreases you get into a push/fold territory where hands you normally wouldn't play early on become profitable shoves. Just have to be patient and pick your spots.

Using hands with blockers like QJo are going to be better than 97s when trying to steal off short stacks.