While there is plenty of general poker strategy for playing tournaments, you should fine-tune your approach for larger tourneys. The main reason why is because large poker tournaments involve more personalities in the field, which translates into looser play, lots of maniacs, and crazy action within the first few blinds levels. That said, here is a look at some large poker tournament tips that will help you survive the early going.

Play Really Tight – As just stated, bigger tournaments involve a lot of overly-aggressive play by inexperienced players. And while your goal should be to take advantage of these types, you also need to focus on making sure the situation is right when doing so. So play really tight in the beginning of big poker tournaments, and wait for great hands/late position to come your way. By doing this, your premium hands almost always have a chance to get paid off.

Don’t Overvalue Dominated Hands – While cards like AQ and KJ can win you big pots when they hit, these hands shouldn’t be overvalued in big poker tournaments because they’re too easily dominated. Now this isn’t to say hands like this don’t have any value – especially when you’re in late position and/or your stack is getting low – but don’t overplay them early in big tournaments.

Raise Big – A generally recommended preflop raise is 3x the big blind plus 1bb for every limper in the pot. And depending on the blind levels, this raise can certainly limit the number of players in a pot. However, in large poker tournaments, it’s usually not enough to make others fold early on because the blind levels are so low, and there are quite a few calling stations in the beginning of bigger tourneys. This being said, you’ll need to raise much bigger than this in most cases to isolate players in big poker tournaments.

In addition to all of this, just remember that larger tourneys have more variance because of all the players involved. So if you’re going to play them often, realize that you’ll go through long periods of not cashing at times.