Live Turbo Poker Tournament Strategy
- In this poker strategy video we review some poker hands player by 'ChewMe1' in a 180-man Turbo Tournament on PokerStars. What interesting startegy spots will we discuss? Find out by watching the video.
- Turbo Tournaments have become popular in online poker. These games feature short levels and quickly rising blinds and antes. Some games use the word turbo, when really players can just expect a quick pace. National League of Poker is hosting a $1,000 Kickstart Turbo Tournament this Friday to get players excited for the weekend!
- Essence of Deep Stack Poker Strategy Deep stacks are defined as 200 BBs or more and the biggest change in game-play is you actually have to play the turn and river. If you're playing with 50-100 BB stacks, by the time you have a bet and a raise on the flop, if you're committed it's always going in either on the flop or the turn.
- In this poker strategy article we share with you some top tips for playing in turbo tournaments on PokerStars. Turbo tournaments offer a fast and fun version of their slower paced regular tournament cousins that can be quite profitable, and in a fraction of the time it takes to win a tournament played at normal speeds.
If you decided to play poker online, and you’re new to this type of entertainment, you might wonder what turbo and hyper-turbo tournaments really are. These are offered on a wide variety of poker sites, and there are always players interested in playing these two types of poker tourneys. So, how are they different from the standard poker tournament on the web?
As with SNG Tournaments you'll want to avoid doing this with easily dominated hands but as long as your cards are 'live' then the risk of a 55/45 situation can be easily made up for by the chance of a 30% stack increase with no showdown! Turbo Rebuy Poker Strategy - Stop Calling All-Ins Without A Great Reason!
The only difference is basically in the time that a level lasts. In live poker, levels can last for a long time, but the standard level time in online poker is 10 to 20 minutes. However, in turbo tournaments, the time needed for levels to go up is even shorter, and it is usually around five minutes.
You can now probably conclude what hyper-turbo tournaments are. They are even faster than turbo ones. The average length of levels on hyper-turbo competition is three minutes.
In other words, blinds will increase every 180 seconds, and that requires super-quick thinking. The good news is that they also bring quick and lucrative rewards if you’re successful in making it to the money list, or even better — winning a hyper-turbo event.

How to Play Turbo and Hyper-Turbo Tournaments
Playing these tournaments is just like playing every other poker tournament, except that you need to think quicker. Yet, don’t consider hyper-turbo players to have superhuman abilities to play this game.
The level of error is much higher in turbo and hyper-turbo competitions, and that’s what makes them exciting. Even the best poker players in the world cannot do everything right when they take part in hyper-turbo events, and that’s they are generally regarded as more luck-based compared to traditional tournaments.
Yet, there are several things that you can do to maximize your potential while playing these two poker tournament variations.
First of all, you need to begin by playing tight. This doesn’t mean to be passive, but rather, just give off a sort of tightness to your play. Simply put, as the levels progress and blinds become bigger, you’ll want to save the majority of your chips for them. At some point, everyone will start going all-in, and that’s where the real magic starts.
There’s no room for mistakes in turbos and hyper-turbos, and making one in the late stage usually costs you your entire stack just a couple of minutes after.
You should also understand that everything comes faster, and so do middle stages of turbo and hyper-turbo tournaments. Therefore, the least you can do is prepare to steal more from the late position.
The essential to staying in-game in this case also to include a wider range of hands you would play compared to the usual poker tournaments.
Live Turbo Poker Tournament Strategy Books
Finally, you should accept the fact that the Return of Investment is probably going to be much lower compared to usual poker tournaments. Although you might win more money per hour, you will still probably earn a lot less in general.
The element of luck is present in this type of game more than usual. As a human being, it is simply impossible to process so quickly what’s the best possible thing to do. Therefore, you’ll have to rely on luck and accept the fact that you might not always be able to get the most out of this type of tournament.
Yet, that’s the beauty of turbo and hyper-turbo tournaments, so feel free to explore them on popular online poker sites and experience the adrenaline rush once the game starts. It might be too confusing at the start, but everyone eventually starts getting comfortable with time.
Live Turbo Poker Tournament Strategy Chart
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Regular tournaments and turbo tournaments aren’t one in the
same. The majority of tournaments will have normal blind
structures whereas turbo events move much faster. For example,
many live poker tournaments have blind levels that last around
45 minutes to an hour. In a turbo event, however, these same
levels are shorted to 15-30 minutes. Needless to say, the game
is going to be much more fast paced and your decision making is
going to be directly affected. Whether you are looking at the
strategy for the beginning of an event or as a whole, changes
are going to be made.
The attraction to turbo tournaments is that they don’t take a
long time to play. The tradeoff to this is the fact that there
will be less opportunity to play and there will be a heavier
emphasis on the luck dynamic. You may just not be cut out to
play in turbo tournaments at all. There’s going to be much higher
levels of aggression in a turbo tournament than what you will
normally find in regular events. The types of players that you
face are going to be different as well. There are so many
variables that need to be accounted for when you go from one
type of tournament to the next.
Player Type
You may or may not realize it, but the general type of player
that you’ll face in these events is going to be quite
different. In normal tournaments, most players are going to be
very passive and will lean towards the more amateur end of the
poker playing demographic. The reason for this is that many
poker players are only in the game for the recreational value.
They don’t have any interest in being competitive to the point
where they are failing to have fun with the game. This is the
primary reason for why tournament poker is profitable for so
many.
When you move into the turbo tournaments, you are still
going to be running into many weak players. The difference is
that these players tend to be more well-adjusted to their game
of type and will usually have a more diverse skill set. Turbo
tournaments are much like any variation of any game in that its
uniqueness creates more specialized players.
General Approach
The standard strategy to turbo tournaments should not be
drastically different than what you would find in any other
event. The primary difference is also the most noticeable, with
the speed of play definitely being at a faster pace. You aren’t
going to have as many people who sit around and wait for hands
as the structure just won’t allow for this to work. You’ll
need to widen your hand ranges right from the beginning so as to
allow yourself the opportunity to get involved before you
cripple yourself through the blinds alone.
Aggression is going to be met with more opposition in turbo
tournaments than in regular tournaments. In a regular event,
there will be a lot of people who just back down to pressure so
that they can last another hand and pick another spot. Because
your odds of lasting longer are greatly decreased by the speed
of the blinds, players in turbo events are more inclined to
fight back. This doesn’t mean that you should be backing down
on your own levels of aggression, not by any means. All that it
means is that you’ll need to be more willing to play in raised
and re-raised pots. The play in turbo events is going to be much
more aggressive as a whole from start to finish and you need to
adjust your play accordingly.
Luck Factor
The amount of luck involved in tournaments is hard to
overstate. When you consider turbo events, you’ll be
subjecting yourself to even more volatility than normal. Earlier
it was mentioned that the play is much faster, which in turn
leaves less opportunity for anyone to really play a ton of hands
over a long period of time. Instead, you’ll be playing in few
pots for greater amounts of chips. There’s nothing you can do
to change this dynamic of the game, but you can still work
towards minimizing the extent to which luck personally affects
you.
One of the most optimal ways to reduce the role that luck
plays in turbo tournaments is to be the aggressor whenever
possible. As a general rule of thumb, the person doing the
betting is going to be more likely to win a hand than the person
calling down the bets. You should be trying to win all of the
uncontested and unraised pots that you possibly can.
Even though players are going to be more active in turbo events, it doesn’t
mean that there won’t be a fair share of dead money
floating around. Make open raises, bet the flops, and use
your aggression to force your opponents into a corner. There’s
no better environment in which to use aggression to your
advantage than in a turbo tournament.
Running Deep
A deep run in these events is going to mean two very
different things. Again with luck, you are going to need things
to go your way in a turbo tournament. Not to say that this isn’t
true in any poker tournament, but the lack of actual play is
going to create an even greater need for bigger hands that can
win on their own. In the bulk of normal poker tournaments, even
players at the final table will have 50 or more big blinds to
work with. In a turbo event, the number of big blinds could
easily be closer to the range of 5-20 big blinds. This will
inevitably create a storm of all-ins where ultimately players
become handcuffed.
In a turbo tournament, you’ll need to have the will power
and determination to take down pots and make plays when you are
running low. You can’t fold and wait for hands. Sure, your life
is going to be on the line over and over again, but this is the
only way that you can really expect to win.


Learn to play your
opponents as much as you can because the cards can only help you
so much. Turbo tournament poker is much more about picking the
correct spots than it is about having good hands. If you can
successfully control your opponents, it won’t always matter
whether you are being dealt the best of hands.