The first 10 hands

When you first start any tournament, especially online, you will have almost no knowledge about the other players playing style. The safest way to play the first few hands of a tournament is to tighten up until you are otherwise confident, and then start playing ranges.

At the beginning of a tournament, depending somewhat on buy in, all of the maniacs, calling stations, and big bluffers are still in, so there are much higher odds of running into these playing styles.

If you do raise on an early hand in a touranment, and you have multiple callers, the odds of at least one of the callers making a very loose bad call is quite high. Its tough to impossible though to know if a three-bet to your raise off of a pair of 10's pre-flop is due to a very strong hand or a poor player.

There is one thing working in your favour though. And that is, rediculous players make rediculous mistakes that are easy to spot after just one hand. So a player who makes three calls on ace high is exposed rapidly, or the big bluffer who gets called with two pair or higher showing his king high. As soon as you see an example of this type of play, you can attempt to isolate the player (which is made easier as they may be the only one who will call your big raise pre flip when you have a strong hand) and play the hand out. For a calling station, second pair or better, or a strong draw are all reasons to keep betting. The key with calling stations or rediculous bluffers is that you must have at least something to defend with, going to the river with ace high is too risky, you want third pair at the lowest to defend (adjust to their play).

So, the safe way to play the first 10 hands of a tournament is to play tight, and play the cards when you do get strong holdings.

If however an early tournament player reveals real weakness, the poor players do fairly rapidly, you can exploit that weekness by attempting to isolate that player and lowering your range against them.