Help. Invited to a hold em tournament?

Question

I have zero hold em experience, will be playing agianst a mixed bag of players. The plus side is this is a promotion with a company I have done alot of business with so it's all free and prizes to $4K and only a dozen players. I have three days, what is the fastest way to up my playing? any tips?

Answer 1

First off find a guide on the rank of hands and study them. You should always know where your hand stands.

Order from high to low-

Royal Flush

Straight Flush

4 of a kind

Flush

Straight

3 of a kind

2 pair

1 pair

High Card

Next, wait til you receive the top 10 or 20 starting hands and play these.

AA (raise pre flop)

KK (raise pre flop)

QQ (raise pre flop)

JJ (raise pre flop)

10 10

AK suited (raise pre flop)

AK un suited (raise pre flop)

AQ suited

AQ un suited

If the price is cheap enough play-

99

88

77

66

55

44

33

22

AJ suited

AJ unsuited

A 10 suited

A 10 un suited

And Ace anything of the same suit. (only play this looking for flush or 2 pair, if you catch a pair of Aces be leary because your opponent probably has a better kicker)

Also go online and play a little with some play money. Pokerstars is a great site.

Answer 2

3 years ago I got a similar invite.  I had only played NLH poker once before with friends with little success.  I decided to take a stab at it and bought a couple of books.  I read the books and felt like I had a good grasp on things.  I stuck pretty much to the advice of the books - played tight to begin with, playing only quality hands until I got a feel for the game and some of the players at my table.  Then I started opening it up a bit and lo and behold I won the whole thing.  I now play almost nightly online and at least once a week in person and totally love it.  I've become a pretty good tournament player and find myself going late into tournaments a good percentage of the time.  At any rate, give it a try.  It's a lot of fun and I bet you'll really enjoy it.  Best of luck

Answer 3

You say you don't have any experience with hold em, do you have experience with other forms of poker?

One trick is Caro's Beginner's strategy. The assumption here is that your only chance to win is preflop, and you are probably going to be outplayed after the flop every time. All you need to do is go all in when you have one of these hands:

AA, KK, QQ

AK, AQ suited

AK offsuit

The only problem though is that these make up only 2-3% of all hands, so you'll probably get blinded out before you get enough of these to take the lead.

Other than that, I would recommend reading Dan Harrington's Poker strategy books, vol 1 and 2. Doyle Brunson's book is most famous, but not easy for beginners.