The handbook
📖 Glossary →Practical strategy, leak by leak. Short reads you can apply on the very next hand.
Preflop fundamentals: position, ranges, and why not to limp
Open with a raise, not a limp; tighten up early and widen on the button — the simplest fix for the most common tournament leak.
Read →Defending the big blind without bleeding chips
You already paid one blind — defend wide, but defend smart: who raised, how big, and what you do postflop decides whether the BB is a hole or a profit center.
Read →3-betting and 4-betting: applying pressure
Stop flat-calling raises out of fear — build a polarized 3-bet range, size it right, and learn the 4-bet/5-bet game that wins pots before the flop.
Read →Cold-calling: when to flat a raise and when to fold
Flatting a raise is the most over-used and abused action in tournament poker — here's how to cold-call profitably and when to 3-bet or fold instead.
Read →Postflop: c-betting, value betting, and bluffing
Stop firing the flop on autopilot — learn when to c-bet small, when to check, and how to size value bets and bluffs by board texture.
Read →Pot odds, equity, and calling correctly
Learn the one calculation that fixes most bad calls and folds: compare what a call costs against the equity your hand actually has.
Read →Playing draws: semi-bluffs and drawing math
Turn your busted-draw chips into a winning weapon: count outs fast, apply the right equity rules, and semi-bluff the spots where fold equity and pot odds line up.
Read →Reading and exploiting player types
Tag every opponent into one of four buckets, then bend your cold-calls and postflop lines to attack their specific leak.
Read →Short-stacked: push/fold and the Nash game
When your stack drops under ~12bb, raise-folding bleeds chips — learn the Nash shove/call thresholds, the math behind them, and the real-game adjustments that beat the chart.
Read →Tournament survival: ICM, the bubble, and pay jumps
Why a chip isn't worth a chip near the money: how ICM forces tighter calls, looser opens, and survival-first folds at the bubble and final table.
Read →Mindset: bankroll, variance, and beating tilt
Tournament poker is a variance machine — survive it with a deep bankroll, realistic expectations, and a hard-wired routine for quitting before tilt empties your stack.
Read →Bet sizing: telling a clear story with your chips
Your bet sizes are a language — learn to pick sizes that pressure the right hands, build pots when you're ahead, and stop bleeding chips on autopilot.
Read →4-betting and facing 4-bets
The 4-bet game is won with combinatorics, not courage: pick blocker bluffs, size by stack depth, and know exactly which hands continue when you get 4-bet back.
Read →Blockers and combinatorics: counting your way to better bluffs
Stop bluffing on feel. Count combos, pick the cards that erase villain's calls, and turn marginal bluffs into automatic ones.
Read →River play: thin value and disciplined bluff-catching
On the river the math is naked: bet thin for value with a plan for raises, and only call when your hand beats their bluffs at the price offered.
Read →Multiway pots: tighten up and bet for value
Three-plus players changes the math: drop bluffs, fold thin holdings preflop, and bet your strong hands bigger — someone almost always has a piece.
Read →Check-raising: building pots and turning up the heat
Most players never check-raise, leaving stacks on the table. Learn exactly which boards, hands, and sizings turn a passive check into a pot-building, fold-forcing weapon.
Read →Barreling: which turns to fire and which to give up
Stop firing the turn on autopilot — learn the equity, card-class, and range heuristics that tell you when a second barrel prints and when to check-give-up.
Read →Advanced techniques: floats, overbets, squeezes & the plays that read players
The weapons strong players use — and the tells they leave. The c-bet/float/check-raise war, 3-bet bluffing with blockers, overbets and polarization, and how to bluff-catch them all.
Read →Frequencies & mixed strategies: why solvers play a hand two ways
Solver charts aren't all-or-nothing — many hands are opened some of the time and folded the rest. Learn what a frequency is, why the edge of every range is fuzzy, and why you should stop sweating the close spots and fix the real mistakes.
Read →Tournament stages: how strategy shifts from early to late
A tournament is three different games wearing one name. How to play deep early stacks, attack the ante-fuelled middle, and survive the shallow late game — and when each gear change happens.
Read →GTO vs exploitative play: what "optimal" actually means
GTO isn't a style, it's a baseline that can't be beaten — and exploitative play is the art of profitably leaving it. When to anchor on theory, when to deviate, and why the best players do both.
Read →The final table and heads-up: closing out a tournament
Short-handed ranges, ladder pressure, and the heads-up endgame: why the same hand gets stronger as the table shrinks, and how to play when first place is two players away.
Read →The stack zones: how 45bb, 25bb and 12bb are three different games
Tournament strategy is stack-depth strategy. Learn the three zones — 25–50bb, 15–25bb, and under 15bb — and the one decision that defines each.
Read →Draw or made hand? Reading a range by counting it
"He bet — does he have it?" is a counting question, not a mind-reading question. Learn to slice a range into monsters, pairs, draws and air.
Read →Fold equity: the maths of making people fold
Every bluff is a price question: what does the bet risk, what does it win, how often must they fold? Learn the break-even numbers and who actually folds.
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