Importance of Uncontested Pots in a Tournament

In Hold’em your success would depend on the number of uncontested pots that you win. In a tournament having a bigger stack has plenty of advantages. You can see more flops, bully your opponents and try to get into races with the smaller stacks without having to worry about getting eliminated. With a small stack you have to play very tight. Gosh, poker is so much more complicated than roulette online. There are plenty of different ways to make a large stack. Getting good hands would of course help and winning one monster pot would of course help but you cannot just depend on that. Many players play too tight a game and when they do bet or raise their hand they commit such less number of chips that they get called by one or two players. What they do not realize is that there are many uncontested pots that they could have won to build up a sizeable stack.

Uncontested pots

So what are uncontested pots? The pot when nobody makes a good hand and it just gets checked a few times across the table is an uncontested pot. This doesn’t really happen too often except the first and the second stage of the tournament. But during the beginning stages most players do not think that its worth playing for a small pot. No pot is too small; every single chip would count in the long run. When you get enough of these little pots you can turn it into one big stack. They might insignificant but they let you get your hands on more pots in the future. You can force your opponents to fold and when you double up these chips would be counted twice. It is important to get as many of these pots as you can in the early rounds.  

Kinds of pots

There are other pots like these that can be taken advantage of when you are in a late position or even at the small blind position when everyone else folds. Regardless of what cards they have, many players would raise at this stage and others would not check if they don’t have a good starting hand. You would have to take advantage of such situations in poker game, but do not raise every time. If you have a good enough hand, plunge in.

When the blinds get higher and the antes are added you should get more aggressive in your play. Try to capitalize on your image by stealing from the late position. If you are against a weak opponent then you might want to steal for the first time and go on doing it till the opponent defends himself. Against a strong player you should only steal the first time and not again. Against an aggressive player you might want to just play passively and try to check raise when the stakes are good.

You should also be aware of which other opponents are trying to get the uncontested pots. You can identify these opponents and pick some situations to raise them to take the pot back. To win a big stack you should try to win a few uncontested pots. play no deposit games online for real cash