can someone recommend a basic strategy for tournament no limit holdem.. i've been playing cash games for many years casually but don't really play tournament.. i just need basic strategy (like not doing the dumbest mistakes of tournament beginners)

Buy the first two Harrington books, job done

+1

/thread


(Geez, I hope someone closes this thread now. If only we had a superhero around....)

While tourney play is probably the softest format online, I think that tag vs tag situations have evolved a lot over the past 15 years since I started playing cards. I've never read a tourney book, but I like to think that I hold my own in small field tourneys with up to 25 or so players. I can't really speak much of larger tourneys, but I have over 2k recorded online tourneys with an ok roi(anything posititve is ok imo).

So here's my 2 cents on tag vs tag battles in small field tourneys:

know your range. Have a decent idea of your opponents range(hint, you pegged him as a tag, so you must have an ok read).

so you end up in a tag vs tag postflop situation through standard preflop play, perhaps 75-150 big blinds deep:

I raise cutoff 3x no antes in play, tag button calls, blinds fold.

flop JT4r

how do you feel about these hands?:

AA
QJs no backdoor flush
QJs backdoor flush
Q9s backdoor flush
98 no backdoor flush
A5s backdoor flush

?

"Harrington on modern tournament poker" is an updated version. It's pretty heavy on the examples (which some think is tedious. I personally like it because it gives you ample chance to test your understanding of the subject).

Does anyone else have any thoughts on Harrington’s updated version? Is it a quality read on today’s play?

His original books were such classics, but doesn’t it make sense to go with an updated text?

I think cash players tend to do well (better?) in the early stages of tournaments due to their natural more aggressive style of play. It usually leads to an early exit or an early accumulation of chips. Where 'all' Players tend to struggle IMO is the transition of styles during the stages of a tournament and adjusting those styles according to their chip stack.

Understanding and reviewing the tournament structure is very important. When is late reg over? How quickly do stacks deteriorate from level to level and where are the biggest blind jumps. Most tournament structures have a spot or two where the field is drastically reduced just due to the blind jumps. How many hands do you expect to see during each level?

How deep are you? How deep is the average stack? Is this a GTO, ICM or push/fold chart spot?

Even if you are a 'solid' winning reg at cash, if you do so with a fixed style of play then making those adjustments to short stack, short-handed tournament spots will need some work.

Stupid mistakes? Really just be aware of hand strength and pot control. Where you might go after 3 streets of value in cash, you probably should scale back the bet sizes and even check a few more streets than normal. The idea of 'I'm only getting called by better.' is way more prevalent in tournament than cash. GL

Note that "Harrington on modern tournament poker" does not rehash the stuff from the earlier books in depth. So if you're thinking about buying the updated version you should consider getting the others as well (and reading those first!).

Weller?

Anywho. Early stages are a lot like cash games. Your stack is 80BB-200BB deep. Pots are usually not all-in and you have room to maneouver. Later stages is a lot more about push/fold and riding the variance train (which is way out of my comfort zone but I think this can be handled OK via the relevant charts and tables). Expect people to push with stuff (correctly) that would seem ludicrous in a cash game.

The part I personally struggle most with is the middling interval where blinds increase to the point where the average stack is only 20BB-40BB deep. Haven't found any good literature on that yet.

Have you read Harrington’s updated tournament book? Curious what your thoughts on it are.

Nope

Ok...thanks for responding.

i have the original three harrington tournament books and also his updated one

my advice would be to read the updated one- harrington on modern tournament poker -and then read "kill everyone"

Thanks for the response Quasar.

So is there anything to gain from reading his original series? Or is whatever that’s still relevant either covered in the updated book or just isn’t relevant anyways?

fwiw i would just read the newer book. it has a couple of sections that go over the basics and then goes into detail about playing various handgroups preflop and then how to handle postflop, street by street, taking into consideration things like position, stack size, whether anyone has already limped or raised, facing 3 bets etc etc and then how to handle allins at various stack sizes

i don't think there's much to gain reading the original but that's just my opinion