In order to properly know what hands your opponents are willing to raise with, what they call with, etc., you need to have some information on them. This isn’t so hard to do when you’ve been at the same cash game table for four hours with little table turnover. But when you’re in poker tournaments, and you get moved to a new table, the process gets a little more difficult.
The obvious thing you need to do after moving to a new table in poker tournaments is play fundamental poker. You don’t have enough info on the other players to call 3-bets with borderline hands, or steal from the button with ATC. Of course, this thinking goes out the window if you are short-stacked (10 BB’s or less), and you need to play a much wider range of hands in pretty much every situation.
If you have 15-20 BB’s after being moved to a new table, this gives you a little more freedom to steal pots and take advantage of desperate short stacks. But even with a moderate-sized stack like this late in a tournament, you need to be careful of big stacks. For example, you might be able to get away with a 3-bet shove while holding marginal cards against someone trying to sneak into the money.
However, if you try this against a player with 40 BB’s, your tournament might be ending very soon. Sticking with facing big stacks, if you’ve got one sitting to your immediate left, you might have to tighten up your range a bit since they’ll be more willing to re-raise and steal a lot of pots from you. On the other hand, you should consider stealing yourself when a medium or small stack opens the action in late position.
To sum this all up, don’t try bullying a new tournament table when you’re only a middle stack or less, and play conservatively until you have a better read on people.
