Poker Strategy - Multi-table Limit Tournaments

I'm not a huge fan of multi-table limit tournaments; I personally think there is too much luck involved. Nevertheless, the Party Poker Million and Empire Poker Crown Tournament have increased the popularity of these tournaments. To succeed at these poker tournament requires a slight change in strategy from your usual limit holdem game.

The most fundamental change to your gameplay involves the 'gap' concept. Mid-way and later through limit tournaments, you must change your style of play from simply trying to get the best of it (winning money in the long run) to just winning pots. Instead of pot odds being your guiding force, you just want to straight up win the pots you play. Since the blinds are so large, you do not want much competition, as a simple blind steal will help your position tremendously.

You should begin playing hands that will just likely win. Flush draws and straight draws lose a tremendous amount in value and high and mid pocket pairs soar. AK and AQ also go up in value because they have most other hands dominated (e.g. AK versus A10 or AQ versus KQ). Late in limit tournaments, you want to avoid heavy conflicts with dominated hands (i.e. you don't want to have AJ against his AK even though he will pay off nicely if AJ is on board).

In order to conform to this strategy, you must do two things. First, if the mood is tight, you should be more willing to go in on marginal hands just in order to steal the blinds. Always, always raise preflop with these hands. If you are two off the button with A9, you should consider raising to steal the blinds. However, the second change you should make is to avoid conflict. If someone has already raised, you certainly should chunk that A9 if you are one off the button. The underlying concept here again is dominating hands: you want your opponents to fold because they are afraid they are dominated and you want to fold if you may be dominated. If you raise with A9, someone with AT certainly will consider folding because they are afraid you have AJ, AQ, or AK and thus have them dominated.

Now, what if you are dealt a premium hand like KK and someone has raised? Ther'es no way you can chunk this hand preflop; what are the chances he has AA? In this situation, you should reraise to knock people out. Raising and lots of reraising is the key; you want to send the opposition the message that you are challenging him for all of his chips if he plays against you in this hand. When you are dealt a big gun like KK, you want to make your stand.

Obviously throughout all of this, you should take into consideration the strength of your opponents. Good players understand the 'gap' concept and will fold if they have borderline hands like AT. However, bad players will simply call. Bad players play their hand; good players play their hand relative to other people's hands. If you see the flop with a bad player, he will most likely fold if you bet and he has not hit and will call you to the river if he has. A good player knows that if he has AT and there is an ace on the flop, he may be finished because of kicker. A bad player is just happy he has top pair.