In tournaments, you should always be looking for ways to ante your chips. You can’t just wait around for Aces or Kings and hope to double up when you do. One of the best and most known ways for adding chips to your stack is by using what’s known as the squeeze play.

A common squeeze play works like this: an active and aggressive player raises in late position, and he’s called by another player on the button. You’re in the blinds and you have to make a desicion of what to do.

There’s no real sign yet that anyone has a particularly strong hand. The aggressive player could be raising with a broad range of hands, and the call from the button could mean a lot of things. He may have a medium strong hand, or he may be really weak and just looking to play post-flop with favorable position.

At this point, a big re-raise from the blinds virtually squeezes the original raiser who is between you and the player on the button. Your aggressive re-raise gives you a great chance of taking down the pot right there.

In the past good players used the squeeze play occasionally. It was just one of the many tools they used from time to time. But recently, the squeeze play has become highly popular. Sometimes it seems that pretty much any time there’s a raise and a call, there’s a player in the blinds looking to squeeze.

You can prefer to be a little more selective when initiating a squeeze. Get a hand that can hit a flop if you run into a decent hand and get called. From experience, suited connectors are good hands to squeeze with.

Probably the squeeze is most effective when you have a tight table image. When you’ve been playing actively and aggressively the other players at the table are less likely to give you recognition for a big hand and will call you down.

Try the squeeze play in ring games, but it’s really most effective in tournaments. When players have to fear for their tournament lives, they’re far more likely to fold in marginal situations.

If you haven’t been using the squeeze play, you should try working it into your tournament game. Start out by squeezing selectively and wait for opportunities where the players, cards and your table image give you the best chance of winning the pot.

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