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Playing Pocket Tens

How you play tens (or any other hand) is always a question of using the best tournament strategy. That's why you so often hear, "It all depends." There are times in tournaments when you might play tens like you would play deuces, especially in the early stages of a big buy-in event when lots of chips are in play and the blinds are small. You don't put a lot of heat on the pot and you don't take any heat to the hand. You might just slip in and hope to flop a set, not getting too involved if you don’t.
Tens and jacks (closely followed by queens) are two of the most difficult hands to play in no-limit hold'em. Although you'd rather have pocket jacks than tens, one advantage of tens is that a 10 can make a straight, and it is less likely that someone else can make a straight because you have two of them in your hand. Just remember that if you don't flop a set to the hand, there are four bigger cards that can beat you.
The bottom line is that you must be prepared to play in different ways against different opponents in different scenarios. If you aren't willing to modify your style of play according to the situation, you can get broke to tens (or any other hand) very easily.

Raise with small pocket pair ?

You've played a patient yet aggressive strategy, and you've finally made it to the final table. The table is six-handed, and you look down on the button to find a pair of fours. Everybody passes to you. What should you do?
Don't follow the example of so many tournament players on the circuit these days and push in your whole stack. Although a lot of players use this move when they're sitting around back with a pair of fours, fives or sixes, I think it's one of the most horrible plays I've ever seen in hold'em. When you have worked that hard to get to the final table, why take the chance of losing your whole stack with a small pair?
In this situation, it might be okay to make a baby raise, or even a medium-sized raise.

Raise or Re-Raise ?

When you’re playing a no-limit hold’em tournament, one of the first things you need to learn about your opponents is which players will bring it in for raises with smaller pairs. This knowledge is important because, unless you have an opponent pigeonholed as someone who often raises with small pairs, the only two hands that you can reraise the pot with are kings and aces. Raising with queens definitely is out of the question unless you’re in the pot against a small-pair raiser, or unless you’re sitting in a favorable position. There is nothing wrong with flat-calling with two queens or two jacks. Save your reraises for when you’re playing three or four-handed. When you have a medium-large pair—tens, jacks, or queens-you might want to reraise if you’re playing shorthanded, something that you never would do in a full ring.

Playing Pocket Aces

If you limp with aces, you will never get broke with aces. The only reason that you limp with aces before the flop is so that someone behind you will raise and give you the opportunity to reraise. If you flat call with them before the flop and nobody raises, four or five players may limp into the pot behind you with all sorts of random hands. The more people in the pot, the more chance that you’re going to get beaten. So, if one of them comes out swinging on a flop that looks dangerous for your aces—three connected or suited cards, for example—you can simply throw your aces away without losing any chips except your original bet. Nobody has seen your hand; nobody knows that you have limped in with aces, so just throw them away.
If you’re in the stage of a tournament when you have a shorter stack than your opponents, you would be a fool to limp with aces.
Two aces are the best starting hand you can get, but when the board is showing two small pair, for example, and an opponent puts in a big bet or raise on the river, what do you have? Still only one pair of aces, Eke and Ike, American Airlines, against a probable full house...