Top 7 Mistakes to Avoid Early in Poker Tournaments
Poker has changed and evolved over the decades, but in the midst of it all, one thing remains unchanged. Tournaments remain, by far, the most popular game type, attracting recreational players and professional grinders alike. If you’ve come across this article, you probably enjoy them yourself, and by the time you’re done reading, you’ll learn about the top mistakes to avoid early in poker tournaments.
These are very common mistakes that many recreational and even some more serious players continue to make, which can have a significant impact on ROI (Return on Investment). While they may seem small in isolation, the effects of these errors compound over time.
The good news is that some of the biggest mistakes to avoid early in poker tournaments are easy to fix. You don’t need to put in a huge amount of study or take unnecessary risks. You just have to make some conscious decisions about your game and stick to them.
Mistake #1: Registering Late
Many live tournaments and almost all online MTTs these days offer late registration. On the top sites like GGPoker , you can often register as late as two hours after the tournament has started. This is a nice option to have, and it certainly helps attract more people and create larger prize pools, but if you want to maximize your ROI, you should avoid late registration whenever possible.
You may have heard some of the top pros talk about the advantages of late registration, and we’re not trying to say they’re wrong. However, if you play low to mid-stakes events, a lot of what they say doesn’t really apply to your circumstances.
During early tournament levels, there is the largest percentage of the “fish” at the table, and many players are really bad at playing with deep stacks. They’ll play too many hands, chasing an early double-up, without realizing that having a big stack early on isn’t all that important.
If you are there from the start of the tournament, you’ll be in a position to profit from these mistakes and chip up. You’ll quickly notice who the maniacs are at your table, and you can wait for good opportunities to rid them of the chips they seem so willing to give away.
When you register late, you’ll miss out on a lot of this action, as many of these players will have busted already. Those who remain may tighten up as the money bubble approaches, and, even if they don’t, their mistakes won’t be as impactful. Once stacks get to around 30 – 40 big blinds, you won’t have nearly as much space to profit on the skill gap.
Mistake #2: Being Reckless With Re-Entries
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in the early stages of a poker tournament is treating your chips as if they have no value. Just like the late registration, most tournaments offer virtually unlimited options to re-enter when you bust. This leads players to play recklessly during early levels, looking to build a big stack.
There is nothing wrong with adopting a looser, more aggressive strategy, but you need to strike a good balance. Every time you reenter a tournament, you’re paying the full price of admission, and this can quickly add up.
What’s even more, chipping up early, as already mentioned, isn’t all that important. If you invest five or six buy-ins to end up with three or four times your starting stack by the time the registration ends, you haven’t achieved that much. A couple of coolers or bad beats will put you right back in the middle of the pack.
This is not to say that you should never re-enter a tournament. Firing multiple bullets in good-value events is perfectly fine. However, don’t build your strategy around maximizing the number of re-entries to chase big stacks, especially if you don’t have a massive bankroll to work with.
Mistake #3: Playing Too Many Hands Early On in a Tournament
Most tournaments these days start with fairly deep stacks. When you sit down to play, you may have 200 or even 300 big blinds in your stack. Many players see this as an excuse to play way too many hands in hopes of flopping big and winning a massive pot.
This is one of the biggest mistakes in poker tournaments, and even more experienced players are often susceptible to it.
In reality, the GTO poker strategy dictates that you should be playing tighter when you are deep-stacked, especially when facing early position raises or entering multi-way pots. Most of the time, you’ll end up with a mediocre hand on the flop, and these hands are very difficult to play when you have hundreds of big blinds behind.
Simply put, if you only have 30 – 40 big blinds and you flop a top pair with a hand like QJ, you’ll be happy to get your stack in the middle. If, however, you have 200+ blinds behind, a top pair will seldom be good facing a lot of action from even a semi-competent opponent.
If the price is right before the flop, it’s fine to enter some pots with speculative holdings like suited aces and small pairs, but you should limit this to when you’re in a late position. Trying to sneak in with a hand like A3s from UTG will often result in calling multiple raises and re-raises, over-committing yourself to a pot that you don’t have business being in to begin with.
If you’re a beginner, you should study some preflop hand charts to understand what hands you should and shouldn’t play from different positions. Learn these charts by heart and stick to them to avoid this common early poker tournament mistake.
Mistake #4: Over-Valuing Hand Strengths
This common poker tournament mistake ties into what we discussed in the previous section: overvaluing certain hands, such as top pairs.
It is hard to flop pairs in Texas Hold’em. However, during early stages of a tournament, when stacks are deep, a single pair – even if it’s a top pair with the best kicker – is often not good enough of a hand to play for stacks.
You can’t avoid these spots, of course, and you shouldn’t be trying to. You just need to treat them as what they are during deeper stack play: relatively marginal hands.
When you flop a top pair with a hand like KQ, be very careful if there is a lot of action, especially if two or more other players are involved in the pot. Even on relatively harmless boards, like K-6-2, it is always possible that one of the other players may have flopped a set to have you drawing almost dead.
This is another reason why you should try to play in position as much as possible. When you have the position, you’ll be able to control the pot’s size much better.
There could be some exceptions where you can take marginal hands and play huge pots with them during the early stages. However, you should only do this against players you’ve pegged as maniacs, and you’ve seen them overplay weak hands. Otherwise, stick to a more conservative approach and wait for nutted hands to play for stacks.
Mistake #5: Not Respecting Your Opponents Early in Tournaments
This particular tournament mistake may sound counterintuitive given all we’ve talked about so far, which is why even experienced players often fall victim to it.
It is true that you’ll find the most fish during the early stages of a tournament. However, that doesn’t mean that every player at your table will be bad. In fact, given today’s online poker situation, there will almost certainly be a few solid grinders in the mix as well.
Underestimating your opponents without any information to back up your beliefs can be very dangerous. You can’t judge how good a player someone might be based on one hand you saw them play.
Don’t be quick to jump to conclusions, and don’t use a very limited set of information to justify bad decisions. This is certainly one of the top mistakes to avoid early in poker tournaments, and you need to eliminate it.
If you’re a more serious player, you might have access to poker tools like HUDs and trackers, which should help you distinguish between regular, solid players and the recreational ones.
If you don’t have these tools, you should learn to use them, as they can be super helpful. And, if you’re playing on a site where trackers aren’t allowed or can’t be utilized due to anonymous names, don’t let your prejudices cloud your judgment.
When you sit down to play, start with the assumption that your opponents know what they’re doing. Then, focus on the action and try to figure out which players are solid and which might be getting out of line. Give yourself enough time to come up with useful reads instead of basing your strategy on one strange hand you may have witnessed.
Mistake #6: Bluffing Too Much
Just like playing too many hands early on, some players fall into a trap of bluffing too much during early tournament levels. They feel like they have plenty of chips to work with, so even if the bluff doesn’t go through, they’ll still have enough to recover.
While this may be true, this fact alone isn’t enough to justify reckless bluffing attempts.
You can expect bad players to make all of the biggest mistakes to avoid early in poker tournaments. This means they’ll play too many hands and will overvalue their mediocre holdings, taking them to a showdown in spots where they are supposed to fold.
This means that your bluffing attempts will not work nearly as often as you need them to. You’ll end up firing three bullets into someone who’ll look you up with a second pair, in hopes of picking off a bluff.
This isn’t to say that you should never bluff early in tournaments, but you should pick your spots carefully. Stick to hands that have a good equity when called and don’t bluff just for the sake of bluffing.
Deep in a tournament, you’ll have situations where you can put a lot of pressure on your opponents, as they’ll be afraid to bust before making money, or they’ll be hanging on for the next pay jump. Many recreational players hate the idea of spending several hours in a tournament and having nothing to show for it.
However, they often apply the exact same logic during early levels. They’ll call wider than they should, trying to catch some bluffs, have some fun, and build their stack. If that doesn’t work, they can always register for a new one or move on to something else.
So, with this in mind, stick to a fairly straightforward strategy during early levels and stay away from “creative” bluffs with random hands. It will save you a lot of chips, and prevent you from making one of the biggest mistakes in poker tournaments.
Mistake #7: Worrying Too Much About Average Stack During Early Levels
Online sites like BC Poker , WPT Global , and others usually display basic information about the tournament, such as the prize pool, total number of registered players, remaining players, and the average stack.
Less experienced players give way too much importance to the average stack in general, but this number is particularly irrelevant early in poker tournaments.
During initial levels, especially at lower stakes, there will be a lot of chip movement, and if you happen to run into a cooler or two, you can fall significantly below the average stack. One of the biggest mistakes you can make early in poker tournaments is taking it too seriously and letting it change your game.
Here’s the thing. If everyone starts with 200 big blinds, the average stack will be 200 big blinds. As players bust, that number will slowly increase. If you lose a big hand, you might drop to 100 big blinds, and you’ll feel the need to get back to that average as soon as possible.
But that’s the wrong thing to focus on. The fact is, you still have 100 big blinds to work with, which is a lot. And that’s the only thing you should care about. You need to make the best possible decisions with the chips and cards you have in front of you – nothing more and nothing less.
Chasing the average stack will lead to some poor decisions, calling with weak hands and draws, promising yourself that you’ll tighten up as soon as you get back up there.
You must get rid of that mentality. In poker tournaments, the average stack will always be a moving target, and you should consider it as a nice-to-have piece of information, but not much beyond that. Your decisions and your strategy should always be guided by actual numbers and percentages. Everything else is a red herring.
Conclusion About the Biggest Mistakes to Avoid Early in Poker Tournaments
You might think of all the above common early poker tournament mistakes as the basics everyone knows, before hitting that registration button, but in practice, things might not work the same as in theory. Make sure you are aware of these seven core rules during your game, and you will already have a better chance of outplaying more than half the players in a freeroll or low-buy-in tournament. Register with our bonus code/referral code SMPBONUS to get as much bonus as possible, and start building up your bankroll. Good luck at the tables!
