It's Sunday morning....or noon if you want to be more accurate. You wake up with a small (big is also an option) hangover, and your first thought is about the Sunday majors. Obviously, today is your day of taking them down, and for that reason, you have to make everything perfect. You rush out of the house, as you want to be away from your PC until the night when the tourneys start (OK, that’s afternoon for most of you), and you try to think about poker as little as possible, since you want to have a clear mind during play.

That sums up a lot of my Sundays, and I'm pretty sure that its not just me .

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The day goes by, and after I wait anxiously in front of my PC for an hour and a half, the tourney finally starts. I'm really eager to play, double up, and dominate the table. After all, it's my day today! I have checked the databases of all the players at my table, and there is no way they stand a chance against me; most of them are losing players anyway.

First five hands and I haven’t played a pot yet. A full orbit completes, and my skill level is not helping me to win all the chips. 10 minutes in the game and I haven’t doubled up yet. In fact, I haven’t won a pot yet!!! What?? You have to be kidding me!

It's 18 minutes into the game, and I pick 89 soooted on the cutoff, against an early raise. Weeeee. This is definitely the hand I am doubling up! Early position raiser has AA or KK, I'm so sure, and of course I will crack them! Flop comes A Q 3 rainbow. WHAT? Come on. Wake up! I'm sure I flopped a straight! EP bets the pot, and of course, I flat call. I'm sure that he has Kings now, and on the turn, I'm definitely taking the pot down. The turn is a blank, and EP fires another one....hmm. HE HAS KINGS. So I raise strongly and he pushes....whoops. There goes 40% of my stack.

25 minutes into the tournament, I raise with AK and get two callers. The flop comes all blank, I bet at it, and I get one caller. The turn's another blank. My opponent is definitely a calling station donk, and he called with nothing, so I have to bet the turn! (Can u see the irony here?) Whoops....I get re-raised, and I have to fold.

45 minutes into the tournament and I am out. Come on! TODAY WAS MY DAY! I can't understand how I can’t beat all these bad players every single time!!!

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OK, enough with the story telling. I have decided to write my first article about major tourneys, because I've had quite a bit of success playing them, and I've learned a few things I would like to share. I might have exaggerated just a bit in my story, but I'm sure that most of us have done something similar quite a few times. Between the donkey plays I have described above, there is a lesson to be learned, not just for the majors but for all tournaments. I specify the majors, because those are the tourneys most players are trying too hard, and also because they require extra patience, due to the huge amount of really bad players and the many hours required to finish such a tourney.

So let's get to the point. Often enough, you will hear that the strategy of many top LAG players is to play fast early and accumulate or bust out early. I have also been using the same approach at full speed, since I also have to be at work 9.30 hours after the majors start, and If I'm not making a good score, I might as well enjoy some sleep.

So how fast should we play early in the tournament? If we do not have a game plan, we will probably fall victims of the voice in our head (see Fox’s article) and make some bad moves. Usually general guidelines on how to play can be given if we factor in our preferred style of play, the level and style of our opponents, and the structure of the tournament.

Preferred style of play:

I play a very LAGGY game, and I will be advocating for it. I do not advise changing your preferred style of play though. Many styles can work, and you just have to perfect them. Watch SamENole on how to perfect the TAG style.

Structure of the tournament:

The major tournaments usually have a very good structure, at least for the beginning of the tournament. Different players interpret a great structure differently. Some say there is more time to wait, some say you have more chips to gamble and take even the most marginal +ev situations, and some say that the value of an early double up is really high.

In deeper stack tournaments, I like to gamble with 25-30% of my chips early on, trying to hit an early double up, and in general, I try to get involved in any situation I think has some value in it. Once I lose that 25-30%, I like to pull back a bit and play a tighter game. Of course, everything depends on the table. One thing is for sure. A good structure allows for more skill to come into play. I strongly suggest that you use some of those chips to gamble a bit, since having a big stack in the mid stages of the tourney will allow you to build more than you think.

We also have to consider how the structure affects the play of our opponents. For the average players, having more chips means they can play looser and make more calls, since they can afford it. So always keep in mind that the average player looks for an excuse to make a call, and having a deep stack is usually a good excuse for him.

Simply put: More chips = Opponents Call More = Bluffs lose value, while value bets gain value.

Level and Style of Opponents:

From my experience, I have found that most players in the big Sunday tournaments fall into 5 major categories. How do we put our opponents in one of these categories? Well, the pokerdb is invaluable to start with, and observation of their play will give you a good picture.

1) Low Limit players who have satellited their way through to the major and feel like this is the biggest day of their lives, so they play a very weak tight game. Their flaw is obvious! They will be playing extremely weak tight, meaning that they will never bluff you, they will never triple bet after their CB is called, and they will see monsters in the closet all the time. They will generally try to fold their way to the top, playing only top hands, since surviving the 3rd break or making the money would mean the world to them.

My advice is simple. Spot them and attack them. Beware of multi-way pots though; if there is three-way action, you must consider the other player as well.

2) Low Limit players who have satellited their way through to the major or decided to take a shot at a higher level, since they are obviously good at their current level. These players play a semi-loose game, and their fundamentals of the game are flawed.

These players are a little tougher to spot. In general, they will look like OK or good players if you rely solely on their (pokeroffice or pokertracker) stats. However, when they get to showdowns, you will see them make goofy plays with weak aces or other similar weak holdings. The flaw in their game is that they usually overvalue their hands to death. And I'm not talking only about TPTK, but also top pair, weak kicker.

The adjustments you have to make when playing against such players are a bit weird. Position is less important against them because they are harder to read, since they do not understand their own hand value. In contrast, hand value is more important, since your value bets will get called more than they should. In general, try to get involved with them. Make a single bluff when you think it's worth it, but only continue with a decent hand. If you have a strong kicker or have two pair, value bet it once you get the first call.

3) Occasional Online Poker Players who play every now and then in some of the bigger tournaments. They usually start playing extremely loose.

Most such players are often called donks, but I`m not sure that’s usually the case. Yes, they play in a very different style than us, and yes they are too loose, BUT they also have a lot of advantages (Check out Fox’s article on why the Donkey is whipping you – WOW, second referral to fox). Older players who have been playing live for years and richer people who know some poker but think about it as more of a gambling game fit into this category! Their main weakness is that they play loose!

How do you counter that type of play? If the whole table is loose, you can either play their game, but play it better than them (i.e. play loose preflop and make better reads/decisions post flop), or you can revert to a more TAG game. If there are only one or two of them, then the optimal strategy in my opinion is trying to isolate them in position with a playable hand, and then trying to outplay them hand after hand by making better decisions because of position. This is what I choose to do, but it adds dramatically to your variance, and if you cannot handle that, then you should switch to a TAG game.

Warning: Just because they play lots of hands out of position, do not assume they are donks in all aspects of the game.

4) Regular mid–top level and volume tournament players who play their normal game early on.
How to play versus this type of player is beyond the scope of my article. Maybe in the future? In general, avoid them unless you have reasons to play (See Green Plastic’s article about the edges one can have in Poker).

5) Regular mid-top level and volume tournament players who try very hard to accumulate chips or bust out early. As they are willing to gamble a lot, you should be willing to gamble a bit more with them, especially in position. If the player has shown a tendency to bluff or is playing really fast, then it might be a good opportunity to trap. However, you have to be aware and not be too straightforward, since some of the top players on the net fit into this category.

All of the above categories were written for the weekly majors with buy ins up to $200. As the buy in increases, the level of play increases, and a new category of players is added – the top players (for example, The Grinder, dblgutshot, emptyseat88), players to whom you must adjust if you have them at your table.

My initial intention about the article was not to analyze specific types of players as I did. That just came out in the process, and I figured it would give the article more content. The above was, in theory, how you should play/adjust to the majors. I will try now to summarize my thoughts and advice in a small paragraph.

Don’t try too hard for the majors:

• The level of play is usually weak, and most players err on the side of being too loose. I do not always concentrate 100% on my tournaments, and when I do not have enough information about a player in such a tourney, I assume he is a loose player who will make bad calls but never big laydowns.

• Early on, I try to make big hands and win big with them. Sure, many times I`ve made many big bluffs early on, but players will simply make too many bad calls. Keep your bluffing to a minimum, and don’t be afraid to value bet marginal hands to death!

• If for whatever reason you switch to aggressive mode early in the tournament, remember that you will have to switch back at some point. These tournaments are long, and you cannot play at full speed from the first to the last hand. This seems pretty straightforward, but most players usually cannot slow down once they have reached full speed, even though they know they should.

• Don’t try too hard. In order to accumulate chips, you have to hit some sort of a hand. If you don’t, don’t try to force it. Forcing action will make you lose your chips faster than you can imagine.

• You should sit with your A-Game week in and week out, but not every week is your week. Once again, I will repeat myself: don’t try too hard, its just another tournament at the end, and you can only win it by playing your best tournament strategy.

P.S. This is my first article, and I would appreciate any form of feedback. English is not my first language, so please forgive some trivial mistakes.
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