In the starting positions of the table, play only with broadways or high pairs. In the final position, expand your range of hands, but focus on suited hands. In the small blind, make a 3-bet or give up. If you hit the flop, be aggressive; if you miss, flee mercilessly (that's what makes sense), keeping your chips in good quantity. In the final phase, you have to force most of the players to quit. Then, with A2-A5s and +ATo, go all-in, so most of the time, everyone will give up. Stealing the blinds at this stage is very important. At the final table, play only with premium cards.
Winning tournaments is a long-term process, not something you can solve with one trick, but there are some fundamentals that make a big difference. First, you need to adjust your strategy by stages. Early on, play relatively tight and focus on strong hands and good positions, there’s no reason to risk your whole stack when blinds are small. As the tournament progresses and stacks get shallower, aggression becomes much more important, especially stealing blinds and antes when players are trying to survive.
Second, stack size awareness is key. You should always know roughly how many big blinds you have and play accordingly. With deep stacks, you can afford to see flops and play postflop. With medium stacks, look for good reshove and pressure spots. With short stacks, don’t wait too long, learn basic push/fold ranges and accept that sometimes you bust doing the right thing. Many players lose tournaments simply by becoming too passive when their stack gets low.
Finally, mindset and variance matter a lot. Even very good players lose most tournaments they enter, so focus on making good decisions rather than “winning today.” Review hands, learn from mistakes, and stay patient. If you keep improving your fundamentals and decision-making, results will come over time.
Second, stack size awareness is key. You should always know roughly how many big blinds you have and play accordingly. With deep stacks, you can afford to see flops and play postflop. With medium stacks, look for good reshove and pressure spots. With short stacks, don’t wait too long, learn basic push/fold ranges and accept that sometimes you bust doing the right thing. Many players lose tournaments simply by becoming too passive when their stack gets low.
Finally, mindset and variance matter a lot. Even very good players lose most tournaments they enter, so focus on making good decisions rather than “winning today.” Review hands, learn from mistakes, and stay patient. If you keep improving your fundamentals and decision-making, results will come over time.
Aggressive poker is winning poker. I study with Johnathan Little for GTO He also has a master class for tourement poker. There's just no one reason why your losing. Iv'e been playing for Decades. There's just more Variance in Tornement poker.Kpaprince said:
There is one answer to each of these questions. It all depends on the situation. It all depends on the format of the tournament, its stage, the size of your stack, the situation at the table, and your opponents. In one situation, you need to be more aggressive, while in another, you can try to give the initiative to your opponents. What situation are we discussing?
With aces, during preflop you need to be aggressive. With short stack, just go all in, but with deeper stack you might want to build the pot. In the beginning stages of tournament, you should be raising your stack with aces, but for example when in bubble, decisions need to be made based prize structure and stacks of opponents.
