When you’re shortstacked in a tourney or just would like to pick up some extra chips, look for prime opportunities to steal the blinds from your opponent. So long as you’ve been at a table for a decent amount of time, you’ll start to learn who easily gives up their blinds and what size bet is usually going to be enough to steal. Many players seemingly hate to fold their blinds to a small raise. They view most raises as a steal attempt, and believe they need to be the sheriff of the table and call your raise. This is a foolish play if they don’t have to cards to merit a call. The first two important rules of playing a strong game of poker are to look at your cards and your position. A player defending his blind just for the sake of defending is ignoring both these essentials. Needless to say, you don’t want to try to steal from this type of player.

Look for players who are just trying to survive the tournament and don’t take too many risks. You also shouldn’t try to steal blinds from early position as you’re more likely to get called from players behind you. The best time to steal is from late position and no one has yet to enter the pot. This is a common situation, especially late in a tournament when the blinds are so large. Mix it up and don’t always try to steal from the same players or they’ll catch on and reraise you. If you get caught on a steal attempt and someone plays back at you with a strong reraise, you have to drop your hand.

Another phenomenon that has arisen because of online poker is the Sit ‘n Go tournament, which is just that. Usually these types of tournaments are one-table freezeout tourneys that begin as soon as the table is filled. These are fun tournaments to play, because you don’t have to beat as many opponents and the action is faster. It’s basically a miniature multi-table tournament, with the top 2 or 3 places paying out. You can incorporate all of the tournament skills we have described, except at a faster pace. For example, many of these tournaments will last only an hour or less. You can be down to the final three players within a half hour. Many of these SnG’s will start off with a couple of maniacs who try to get in an instant double-up. You’ll probably want to stay out of this early action unless you’re holding premium cards. In these types of tournaments especially, you are rewarded just for watching your opponents get knocked out.

If you play in a lot of SnG’s and play properly, you’ll often end up in heads-up play at the end of the match. This can be tricky to beginners, but you’ll have to play an aggressive game. You’ll need to bluff more often and intimidate your opponent. Holding any two face cards is a premium hand heads-up, so you might even consider going all-in preflop with this hand. Any Ace is also a strong hand, and you should pressure your opponent with it. The best type of player you can have against you heads-up is a timid one, and you can push him around and take a lot of his chips until he fights back. Inevitably, you’ll get and run into a real hand. If it happens to come when you were bluffing all-in, don’t sweat it. You always have a chance to win the hand, and you’ll still get a nice prize for second place if you don’t improve.

That’s our guide to becoming a winning online poker player. It may be tough to keep all these concepts in your head at all times when you’re just starting out, but just play smart and a tight-aggressive game. Keep this guide open if necessary to refer back to while you play. You’ll also probably run into situations that haven’t been covered in this guide, but we’ve given you a solid foundation to playing a winning game. Choose the right starting hands, raise them accordingly, don’t draw too often, and most importantly, have the patience and discipline to become the best poker player you can be. Until next time, we’ll see you at the tables.

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