- In the beginning stages of a poker tournament, the blinds are small relative to the stack sizes. You might have 5,000 starting chip stacks and the small and big blinds may start at 25 and 50. The pots are smaller and not worth risking a lot of your chips for unless you have a very strong hand.
- As the blinds rise throughout the tournament each pot becomes more valuable. While the blinds may have begun at 25 and 50, a few levels later they may have risen to 100 and 200 with a 25 ante. Now, instead of 75 being in the pot pre-flop, there is now 550 in the pot at a 10-handed table. You will want to raise with more hands to try to win pots before the flop.
- If you have managed to win several pots and build your stack up nicely (perhaps you turned your 5,000 stack into 15,000) start raising even more pots. Players with small stacks must choose their battles carefully to avoid elimination. You, on the other hand, can raise without fear if your stack dominates the table.
- When the field narrows to 15 to 20 percent of remaining contestants, many players start to tighten up their play to ensure they make the money (usually about 10 percent of the players in a tournament get paid). This is a time where you can steal a lot of pots from players who don't want to tangle with an opponent, for fear of finishing on what is called the bubble in a poker tournament.
- The first few places in a poker tournament are paid a disproportionate amount of the prize money. Usually the players who just squeak into the bottom tier of the money make only about double the buy-in amount. Because so much of the money is locked up in the top spots, you should play to win by making the risky plays that others are afraid to make.
