Online Tournaments Strategy

In addition to the information provided on our page on general poker strategy, there are a few other tips unique to online play that you should be aware of.

Bluffing

Bluffing, when done correctly, can be an effective way to steal the pot when you have a marginal hand. However, remember that a lot of beginner players don’t fully understand the nuances of the game and stay in way more hands than they should. That said, they call much more often when the correct move would have been to fold, which you would need them to do to pull off a successful bluff, so limit your bluffing to when you’re playing against skilled players. There are a lot of beginner players online, so expect to be called a lot and bluff less than you would if you were playing live.

Multi-tasking players

It’s not uncommon for players to be doing other things while they’re playing in an online tournament (they could be watching TV, working, surfing the net, eating dinner, and so on). Some players even play more than one tournament at a time, so their attention to the game is limited. They might only look at the table when it’s their turn to act and are oblivious to any fancy, skilled poker moves you make, so play a straight game and save the advanced moves for live play where people are paying attention to everything going on in the game.

Loose and passive online players

Many online poker players (the beginner ones in particular) play a loose and passive game; they have a tendency to call too many bets and raises pre-flop, and they play badly after the flop. If you’re a decent poker player, you can ease up a little on your starting hand requirements when playing against these kinds of players as long as you fold once it’s clear you don’t have the nuts. If you do get a very strong starting hand, you might be wise to not raise too much before the flop so the loose/passive players don’t fold yet and instead limp into the pot. Just keep betting in a way that you don’t force them to fold quite yet and try to get as many chips out of them before the river (or before they do fold).

A great site to practice all of these skills is PokerStars.com. They have many different types of tournaments for you to choose from (such as the poker variant, stakes and betting format), and because they’re the biggest site in the world with the most players, their tournaments are extremely active and they have one starting every few seconds. Another great feature about PokerStars.com is that the players there have a range in poker skill ability, so you’re not relegated to just playing against beginner players (from whom you’d learn nothing).

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