Raise and Shove is Bad Tournament Move

If you play enough poker tournaments you will quickly realize that making large raises early on in the first few levels effectively renders your hand useless. This becomes the case because of two things. First, when you make a $200+ raise with only $1500 starting chips it gives away the strength of your hand. Second, if you get re-raised most online players are not disciplined enough to get away from [Q][Q] or even [K][K] and[A][K].

These kinds of scenarios simply re-emphasize the fact that making a 4x's the BB with a premium hand early on in the tournament is the optimum way to play it. The reasoning being that should you get re-raised you can then flat call or get away from the hand without taking a substantial hit to your stack. This concept doesn't necessarily apply to higher stakes buy-ins about $50 but you certainly see a lot of pre-flop pushing with less than optimal hands as well as with [A][A] in every kind of low stakes poker tournament.

The point is that you want to leave yourself room to get away from the hand. With such small starting stacks you virtually are commited to the hand after a $200+ raise with [Q][Q] or [K][K]. You also do not want to bust out early in a tournament with [K][K] after being re-raised all-in. Some would suggest there is no way you can lay that kind of hand down but I would beg to differ. I can always find a better spot to get my chips in with the best hand when it's still early on in the poker tournament.

Remember, many online poker players have the idea that raising and then shoving is the correct way to play big hands early in tournaments. Flat call with those middle pairs and double up when they do.