If you decide to enter any poker tournament, you’re sure to be glad of some general tips to help you to get into a winning situation to have a better than average chance at taking one or more of the big cash prizes.

It may sound like a no-brainer, but make sure you are confident that you are proficient at the tournament’s variant of poker played. Plenty don’t and you can take their chips easily by spotting the fish on the table.

As to the play, in single table tournaments, avoid aggressive play on suited connectors as they’re not as valuable as many people believe especially as people are short stacked. If you must call, then do so near the start of the tournament.

Keep track of other players as you’ll probably run into them in future tournaments.

On multi table tournaments, if it’s later on and you’re short stacked, one consideration is to go all-in pre-flop and try to steal blinds. This is less risky if your hand is not so strong than waiting to go all-in after the flop.

All the usual poker play tips will apply to tournaments as well, so make sure you read up as much as you can and play as often as possible to build your experience and knowledge because you’ll need as much as you can get when entering any tournament. With enough of these qualities, you will already be more advanced than many of the competitors and therefore stand a higher chance of winning than you would otherwise expect.