1st Tourny Question

Howdy. I just discovered this site and it is great. Anyways my group of friends have decided to have a hold'em tourney and I am greatly looking forward to it but I have a question. When we get togeather to play poker it usually includes different games and when a hand of hold'em comes up everyone always stays in to see the flop. I definately see believe that this is going to happen during the tourney in the early rounds since it is ingraned into everyones psyche.

How should I take advantage of everyone staying for the flop for the first few hands?

I think the best advice would be to not see the flop without a premium hand. Peer pressure might make that tough, though.

If you know most of the people will pay the blinds at least to see the flop I would do the following:

Raise the max with top pairs (KK,AA)

Depending on the amount of people in your table I would proabably see the flop with any pair, if you have 8-9 people in your table, and they all will see the flop, I assume they will also call with top pair almost any kicker or even middle pair, you get great implied odds on a pair

Play suited connectors, again, with a field that large you get good implied odds

Do not raise too much with hands like AK, AQ, JJ, QQ - you will not narrow down the field by that in your case

Raise it high with premium hands. Limp with drawing hands like Axs, suited connectors and low pairs. Undervalue top pair top kicker and two pair post flop.

-'rilla

Play group 1/2 hands specifically, and possibly 3 if you think you can play with a read-based decision going into the turn/river.

Push fantabulous hands (AA/KK/QQ?)

Limp borderline hands (AXs, suited connectors etc), only play if you hit the flop big.

I think that the recommendations of most people (myself in a previous post included) refer to the stage of the tournament when there are 7+ people. Once you get down to 3-4 people you will need to change your strategy a bit.

Suited connectors are less valueble at this stage because the implied odds are usually not good.