3 HACKS To BUILD A BIG Stack! [Poker Tournament Strategy]

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Learning how to build a big stack in poker tournaments will help make the difference between making a run to the final table rather than just scraping by with a min cash!

In this poker strategy video Jonathan is going to teach you 3 hacks to build a big stack in poker tournaments! Use these poker tips to help you become one of the chip leaders in a poker tournament rather than one of the short stacks!

So many players run deep, but always fall short of the final table. They let their stacks dwindle down and never have a huge stack! In this poker tutorial you’re going to learn how to build a big stack in poker tournaments:

– Preflop hacks and why nits typically don’t chip lead
– Deep stacked postflop tips to stack more people
– How to abuse the bubble & steal tons of pots

If you want to build a big stack you have to stop being so tight preflop. You need to keep your opponents guessing! You do that by 3-betting often, looking to steal pots that don’t belong to you, and by fighting hard for pots preflop!

When you’re deep stacked, position is everything! You get to control the size of the pot and put the last bet in. You have the most information on the hand as you will be the last one to act, this is extremely powerful. Imagine playing a game of rock paper scissors but your opponent had to make their move before yours? You would win every time! Position is power! Focus on playing wide ranges when you’re in position and use the deep stacks to your advantage!

Too many players are so happy to cash in a poker tournament that they just watch the blind levels increase and their own stack decrease throughout the bubble period! Min-cashing in a poker tournament should not be the goal. The goal should be to make the most money that you can so make sure that you are battling hard as the bubble approaches!

Very often in small stakes tournaments, the person with the chip lead doesn’t totally realize the pressure that they can put on other players. So once you recognize a passive chip leader, it’s time for you to act as if you’re the chip leader and crank up the aggression!

0:00 – Intro
1:20 – #1 – Don’t Be A Nit Preflop!
3:01 – Increase Your 3-Betting Frequency
7:14 – Defend Your Big Blind Very Wide
11:06 – #2 – Play Pots In Position When Deep Stacked
11:45 – Poker Hand Example #1 – 86ss
17:09 – Poker Hand Example #2 – K5ss
20:06 – #3 – Stop Over-Valuing A Min-Cash
20:53 – As You Approach The Bubble – Gamble HARD!
22:56 – Take Advantage Of Passive Chip Leaders
23:25 – Poker Hand Example #3 – A5o
25:18 – Poker Hand Example #4 – A5o
28:16 – 3 Hacks To Build A Big Stack

On this Poker Coaching channel we cover a weekly poker topic to help improve your poker strategy!

In order to take your poker game to the next level it is vitally important you learn all the nuances of the game.

Do you know what ranges of poker hands you should be playing from each position? When should you 3-bet, call or fold? When is the right time to make a hero call or a huge bluff? Do you know how to play preflop, flop, turn & river effectively and how should your poker strategy change depending on the street? What difference does it make if you are playing multi-way vs heads-up?

#pokerstrategy #pokertournament #poker

Source: YouTube

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10 thoughts on “3 HACKS To BUILD A BIG Stack! [Poker Tournament Strategy]”

What do YOU do to build a big stack in a poker tournament? 🤑

Overall I agree, and I know I successfully struggled to learn these lessons the hard way before improving a lot.

But on the flip side, I learned an equal amount from playing "survivor" tournaments where 10% of the field gets paid exactly the same amount regardless of stack size when the field reaches that size and the tourney ends. While a survivor tourney might give you exactly the bad habits this video tries to correct, it also shows you the incredible number of mistakes people make by automatically being overly aggressive in spots where it's not only unnecessary, but absolutely risks their tournament life in spots where they CAN coast into the top prize.

In one survivor tournament with Will "The Thrill" Failla, someone shoved into his KK when he could coast to the win. He agonized for only 20 seconds, said "I'm the only player here who would ever fold this" and showed the KK as he folded. I laughed, looked at him, pointed to our two big-enough stacks, and he said "OK, two players here would fold it".

I cashed in 1/3 of all the survivor tourneys I played. It sometimes teaches you who is a thinking player and who is on autopilot. It sometimes teaches you how to build a stack while you can, how to establish a table image to help you when you're card dead. It sometimes teaches you how to hang on by your fingernails for longer than you think possible, which can apply to laddering up in a real tourney when that has more EV than going for the win, due to your small stack and the dynamics between the bigger stacks. It also teaches you about situations where a smart big or medium stack will want to keep you around and even almost feed you chips, if it helps them abuse other players and force them to play hands rather than wait for you to be gone and ladder them up.

Last but not least, if you play both cheap and expensive tourneys with the same pool of players, it pays to be more nitty at the cheap tourneys, so that in the expensive tourneys, your image carries over there, and you can have extra fold equity anytime you need to run a bluff. Especially because most players do exactly the reverse, splash around for small money and nit up for big money.

Good video, but I'm not sure about your JJ versus AK thing. Not because that exact scenario is wrong, but because that's not a realistic thing that happens. At most lower stakes tournaments, no one's ripping it in with 50 bb on the bubble with AK. So even though I'd call with JJ if I knew I was flipping, JJ is definitely not even close to flipping against a 50 bb jam from the average rec tournament player. If YOU jam there, I'm snapping it off because I know you'll play better, but not against players at my local casino $250 buy in tournaments.

It never hurts to stack a few wild drunks, though sometimes that requires a hero call, and I hate calling off and being wrong.

Step one buy in at 1-2

Step 2 shove repeat until you double up

Step 3 ask the dealer to convert all your chips to $1 denoms (they love that)

Going to try the first tip a bit when I play next. Don't have much of an issue getting to, or atleast close to the money most of the time, just can't seem to get there with a big stack often enough. It however has atleast given me enough practice at nursing a short stack haha.