Understanding the Importance of Blinds in a Turbo Poker Tournament

Tournaments, Turbo Poker
July 16 2008

With blinds being such an important issue in Turbo tournaments, it’s important to get into as many hands as you can. You can’t win a hand, or a tournament, if you don’t get in there and play, and this is especially true for Turbo tournaments. You should always be looking to get into any hand with medium to premium strength hands. In most situations that you have these hands in a Turbo tournament, you should be raising pre-flop. But what about the times when your cards are not that strong?

If it’s important to be in as many hands as possible in Turbo tournaments, then playing weak hands must be part of your game. Playing rags is best done by limping into hands and hoping that they hit the flop. Limping into pots is not a cheap habit to have in these tournaments, so you want to do it at the right times. It doesn’t make sense to limp, only to have another player raise it up after you. You’ll just lose your call or be forced to raise the action with weak cards.

Wait for limping opportunities, like when you’re in the small blind or on the button. The later your position, the less likely someone will raise after you. Sometimes a limp under the gun can start a series of limps where five or six players will see the flop. This is the scenario you want to be in when you have junk cards. Your pot odds will improve with more players in the hand.

Then you want to see the flop hitting you in a big way. That means if you have top pair, two pair or trips, you’re probably in the lead. You should bet aggressively to pick up the pot before someone sucks out a draw card on you.

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