When you begin playing online tournaments, you will notice there are four distinct stages. Acknowledging each as its own element will help improve your game, as well as make a lengthy tournament seem much less daunting.  The stages are:

• First Hour
• Making the Bubble
• In the Money
• Final Table

Each stage has it’s own complexities and rewards, so I am going to write about each in separate installments of this series.

Stage One – The First Hour.  The first stage is sometimes the most difficult. You are not only trying to accumulate chips, but also waiting for up to half the field to bust out. If you are playing a rebuy tournament, many players will go all-in hand after hand, knowing they can just rebuy if they lose. This is a prime opportunity to sit back and wait for your chance to set a trap on some of the looser players.

As in all stages – patience is a key factor. I try to hold out for the best hands possible, playing only about 12-20% of the hands I am dealt within the first hour. It is rare that I have to rebuy (if that is an option) because I am patient enough to wait for the cards or the right opportunity to make a move. My goal in this stage is to simply make it past the first hour with an increase in chips. I have no thoughts about making the money or the final table yet, and this allows me to focus on the task at hand. 

As a very general guideline, if you have doubled your initial stack by the end of the first hour, you should be in decent shape to enter the next phase.

Tomorrow:  Making the Bubble