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Expert no-limit tournament players do a great job of building their stack even when they have gone card dead. They use their stack size and position at the table to prey on timid players and do not necessarily rely on the cards they are dealt.

Expert poker players play their opponents as much as they play their cards. When you steal the blinds, you win enough chips to play one more orbit at the table. When you steal a pot after there has been a pre-flop raise, you win enough chips to play a few orbits, so you do not need to steal pots as frequently.

One of my favourite moves when I am in the big blind is to just call a pre-flop raise from somebody in late position, preferably the button. Most tournament players know the importance of stealing blinds, so if your opponent raises in late position, there is a good chance that they do not have a premium hand.

Statistics show that two thirds of the time they will not have improved their hand on the flop. Most players who have raised pre-flop will still bet after the flop, even if the flop did not help them. By check raising them on the flop, you will often take down the pot. You do not necessarily have to have a strong hand, but you are hoping that they do not either.

When you are successful, you will usually win enough chips to play three or four more orbits. There are obvious dangers to attempting this move, such as your opponent actually having a very strong hand or flopping a draw. You should only attempt this move against tight timid players who have demonstrated that they can fold a hand.

Another move that you can make against a late position raiser is to just come over the top and go all-in pre-flop. Again, you are hoping that they do not have a hand that they are willing to risk their entire stack on.

You are risking your stack based on the situation rather then the strength of your own cards. Unless you have a great read on your opponent, you do not want to attempt this move with junk hands like 72 off-suit. If you attempt to come over the top, try to do it with hands that still give you a shot at winning the pot if you are called.

Hands like small pocket pairs, suited connectors, or A-x always have a good shot at winning the hand when called, however your goal is to get your opponent to fold pre-flop. You want to try this move against players who will raise pre-flop with weak hands trying to win the blinds.

Do not attempt to come over the top of a player who has not played a hand in 20 minutes. The chances are they have a very strong hand and would be willing to call your all-in.

Both of these moves have obvious risks, but if you can learn to identify the spots when these moves will be successful, you will be able to build your stack without having a strong hand.

You do not have to worry about being blinded out because you will win larger pots than if you had just stolen the blinds. You do not want to attempt either move if you are very short stacked because the likelihood of your opponent calling you is much greater. Your goal is to get your opponent to fold.

It takes some trial and error to be able to add either of these moves to your arsenal until you are extremely confident that you will be successful. When you are, you will be able to go much deeper in tournaments, even when you are not getting good cards.

Poker players often talk about the long run when analyzing their play. To help understand “the long run”, try flipping a coin ten times. We know that the odds of the coin landing on heads is fifty percent.

However this does not mean that the coin will alternate between heads and tails on each consecutive flip. You are very likely to see the coin land tails a few times in a row. In those ten flips, the coin might land on heads sixty or seventy percent of the time. In reality, the results of any small sample size are likely to differ from the expected results.

It is only through repeating the process over “the long run” that we begin to achieve the expected results. If you were really bored one weekend and flipped the coin a million times, you would find that heads will land much closer to 50% than in your sample of ten coin flips.

Understanding the concept of odds and how they relate to poker will help you analyze your game and hopefully will help you deal with the emotional ups and downs of the game. As poker players we can calculate the odds of us hitting our draws.

We know that if we hold a flush draw on an unpaired board, the odds of us completing the flush on the river are 4:1. That means that if we call for one big bet after the turn, there needs to be more than four big bets in the pot for our play to be correct.

If we only call the bet if we have the correct pot odds, we know that in the long run it will be a profitable play. Obviously we won’t hit our draw on each and every hand, but we can feel good knowing that we made the right decision.

Continuing with the flush draw example, our success in any given session will often depend on us actually hitting the draw. If a player has eight flush draws in a row and doesn’t complete his draw on any of them, it is very likely he will have a losing session.

During the next session, if the same player completes five out of eight nut flush draws, he will be very likely to have a winning session. During both sessions he played great poker, but his results were dependant on the short term fluctuations of the game. After playing a million hands, this player will have hit his flush draw very close to 20 percent of the time.

Poker can be a frustrating game when we do not hit our draws despite playing correctly, due to great pot odds. Don’t be discouraged when you feel that you are not hitting your draws because if you make the right decisions, you will be a winning player in the long run.

The check raise can be an effective tool to control your opponents and force others to make mistakes. It can help neutralize your opponent’s advantage due to position. You can trap opponents with your strong hands. As well, you can protect your good but vulnerable hands in family pots. It is very important that you do not attempt to check raise passive opponents because your plan will backfire if you give them a free card if they do not bet.

When we play hands out of position, our opponents have a very large advantage since they see what we do before they act. If we always check when we have a weak hand, observant opponents will pick up on this pattern and bluff us out of pots. By check raising, we keep our opponents on their toes, and they will value bet and bluff less frequently.

In hands that involve multiple players, we can isolate players with a check raise and force those who act after us to pay multiple bets to continue in the hand. Look at the situation where there are three limpers and the button raises. We call the raise in the big blind with AJ offsuit, as do all the limpers. The flop comes J25 with two hearts and everyone checks to the pre-flop raiser. The pre-flop raiser bets as expected and we can now raise, thereby forcing the three players who act after us to pay two bets if they want to continue in the hand. If we had just bet out and any of the limpers called, they would be likely to call the extra bet if the button raises.

Check raising is an effective tool in hands with only one opponent. By check raising, which is a sign of strength, we get extra bets into the pot with our very strong hands. Opponents who tend to bluff players that show weakness will begin to become more passive in pots that you are involved in, because they fear the check raise.

While the check raise is an effective tool, it should be used relatively sparingly. If you constantly attempt to check raise your opponents, they will begin to take free cards after you check. This gives them the opportunity to outdraw you with weaker hands for free, which would be a huge mistake on your behalf. The real key is to only attempt the check raise when you feel an opponent will bet.