Creating a deceptive persona at the poker table.

When playing in online poker tournaments, you're eventually going to have to start mixing up your play so as to trap your opponents and capture their stack. Most players fulfill this by getting involved in a few small pots with weaker hands or draws that they can show at the river.

Forethought should always be taken however, because your adversaries in the early stages of online poker tournaments are willing to risk far more than you would expect.Once you make it past the early cycles though, you will find more tight-aggressive players that can fall into your trap if you mix up your game and hand selection prudently.

Your goal here is create disarray in your opponents and that may take some experience to do correctly and inexpensively. Now this may be a bigger challenge since you cannot see your opponents.

Pot control is the key here as you want to mix it up, but not make it costly to do so. This is paramount and goes to your emotional training and experience in playing poker, because you will often run into aggressive, prudent opponents and your inner urges may lead you to clashes where you're far behind.

This is often the biggest hump to get over when improving your poker game, but you must do it so as to avoid being too easily readable by sharp opponents. For long term winning in poker tournaments, a lack of control will cost you money.

This is a strategy I often use when starting a poker tournament. Take a connector hand or two, and be intent on raising with them whenever you get them dealt to you during the tournament. You can't always do it, but if you are first in the pot then make believe it is better than it really is and play it that way.

It really doesn't matter which hands you pick but try and choose ones that have flush or straight potential. The added bonus here is that if your opponents are using poker software to track your style of play they are getting misinformation.