1st Tourny Question

[BrotherMunsen]

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?

[Brodie]

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

[TLR]

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

[a500lbgorilla]

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

[allLiving]

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.

[TLR]

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.