12 Top Poker Tournament Strategies We Learn From Gus Hansen about Early Stages of Play

Gus Hansen’s new book “Every Hand Revealed” is one of my favorites books since he analyzes the hands from his winning the 2007 Aussie Millions Event.

After reviewing the book, I have identified 12 top poker tournament strategies from Gus Hansen’s book. It’s important to note that Gus plays in big stack events with long time periods before blinds increase. Your events may be give you fewer chips and less time in each round.

Overall, you can use these poker tournament strategies to help your own game or to simply beat Gus Hansen when you play against him.

A. Pre-Flop

1. He likes to limp and see flops. Gus doesn’t like to risk all his chips early in an event.

2. He takes early position pre-flop raises seriously and therefore is less likely to re-raise the player. Early position is the first three positions after the big blind.

3. He will call pre-flop raises often in the big blind with speculative hands when the pot odds are 2-1 or better. Speculative hands are drawing hands like 5-4 suited.

4. He is willing to raise pre-flop with K-x suited if he is first in the pot and in late position.

5. He looks to raise pre-flop on the button, cut-off or power positions.

6. He will re-raise pre-flop on the cut-off or the button with a hand as weak as K-7 offsuit if he thinks the raiser is weak; especially if that raiser is seated right next to him in a back position.

B. Flop

7. He doesn’t always make a continuation bet on the flop. He will check with awful flops for him; that is, for example a coordinated flop where the flop totally misses his hand.

8. He tries to avoid being outdrawn by putting the other player all-in on the flop or the turn when the pot size dictates it’s the best play.

9. He will fold top pair on the flop when he gets bet into on the flop; although he prefers not to fold if he was the pre-flop raiser.

C. Turn

10. He has no issue in folding his hand if someone check raises him on the turn.

D. Overall

11. He doesn’t call an all-in bet without the best hand. The exception is when the odds and the relative chip stack situation dictate a call.

12. He does not have FPS, or Fancy Play Syndrome, as he will move all-in when he knows he has the best hand.

I have posted more poker tournament strategies I learned from reading Gus Hansen on my website at Poker How Tos