There is some horrifyingly bad advice in here, but what you need to be able to do as a beginner is put the “table” on a playing style, and play the exact opposite. Being tight/aggressive is typically the best way for a beginner to play, until you learn some more elaborate moves and open up your game more, then you can play loose and aggressive. Under no circumstances can you ever be successful and be a tight/passive or a loose/passive player.
If you have a table full of calling stations, who won’t lay down anything preflop, then you also have a table full of donks who can’t lay down anything postflop either. You want to do 2 things
1)Play power hands against one or two of these idiots at the most for HUGE pots. The next time you play this tournament, find out what raise level it takes to thin a hand preflop. Typical preflop raises are 2-5x the BB, but if you aren’t forcing anyone out with that, then the next time you get AA or KK or QQ, go to 8-10X the BB. You will still get 1-2 callers playing 55 or A6 or K8. You want to be aggressively playing AA, KK, and AK here. JJ 1010 99 would be hands you would normally play aggressively, but with clowns who will call any preflop raise with any A or any K you are going to give yourself very hard decisions post flop by playing those medium pairs. The biggest thing for you is to make sure you don’t put yourself into as few difficult decisions as possible until you have more experience.
2)Play hands where you can draw to the nuts. If you can limp with suited connectors or a suited A preflop, do it. When you nail it, the idiots who can’t lay down the idiot end of a straight or middle pair will go broke and you will get all their chips. If you dont flop the hand or the draw you are looking for, you need to be very careful. Holding A4 and flopping A 10 7 is very problematic at a table like that, since you may be up against players also limping with any A.
One thing that people do not do enough of is bet your draws. You absolutely must raise and bet your draws the majority of the time. You need to get used to the idea of using the fold equity of a given flop to move the winning %s in your favor.
You- 8s7s
Opponent-QdQc
Flop- As Js 5d
If you check this flop over, and he bets, you are giving him control of the hand, and when he bets out 1/2 the pot, you have to sit and decide if he is bluffing, if the pot odds are right, and if you have any implied odds. By betting out at this flop, you are putting the hard decision on him. He now has to wonder if you made your A, or if you are bluffing (trust me, it never occurrs to calling stations that someone would raise or bet out on a draw). You are 36% to win the hand, but if he folds only 15% of the time that you lead out with a bet, you are now even money. In addition, by disguising the draw, when it does hit, you check it and many new players will shove all their chips in bluffing the flush, which you just hit.
Poker tournaments are won by building pots and taking them away by forcing other players into mistakes. Otherwise, it would just be a luck contest.
Either way, you need to play few pots, for big chips.
And, YOU need to take control of the table early. If you are in late position, and get a huge hand, I wouldn’t mind seeing you shove it all in if 7 people limp in. I often make inordinately large raises with trash on the button or in a blind if too many people limp on my blind.
So
1)Find out what preflop raise amount will thin the field for a given hand, whether its 8x, 10, or 12x the BB
2)Play huge hands for huge pots against 1-2 players
3)Play great drawing hands if you can limp in, especially when the blinds are small, in an attempt to be one of those players who builds a stack and gets to push the table around. Suited connectors, suited As, maybe suited Ks, and small pairs looking to flop a set.
Some tells-
Players who “shuffle” their cards or slide one above and under the other are on a draw. Strong, dominant moves indicate a bluff. A player who sits back when a card hits the board just made his hand. A player whose hand is shaking as he bets just hit a MONSTER hand.
Do not watch the cards hit the board. They do not matter, and they do not change. Watch the other players.
Eventually, you will have to learn to play with trash, because you are going to have dry runs of cards in any big tourney. In a small friendly tourney, you may just get a dry run the first 2 hours and you are pretty much out of luck. When that happens, there isn’t much you can learn, just chalk it up to “one of those things” and wait til the next one.
Once you are more experienced (TOURNEY PLAY ONLY), you can start playing more like the Gus Hansens/Negraneau type of player (I’ve adopted this style slowly but surely myself), where you aren’t playing to survive the first rounds, but to build a huge chip stack and run through everyone. Basically, you can RAISE with any two cards, or any flop, or any hand, that you want, because your aggression and the fact that no one knows if you have 35s or AA makes them very wary to play any hand with you. You can steal many pots, and when you do have a monster, often get paid off.
FWIW, I freerolled and qualified to the main event the last 2 years through Bodog and finished 583rd last year after my QQ got busted by Ad4d flopping 3 diamonds when he called almost 1/2 his stack on my reraise preflop. With A4. He had 105K chips to my 102K.