Playing Coin Flips in Poker Tournaments

[KaciBlakely]

Found this article useful and wanted to post and see if you agree. I think it helped improve my style and game too.

Coin-flips are practically inevitable in an online No Limit Hold'em tournament, however some players enter coin-flips far too often and wonder why they are not successful in tournament play. Although odds are you will enter numerous coin-flips in each tournament you play, it is important to enter them in the most advantageous situations possible.
These situations may include knocking a shorter stack out, doubling up when you hold only a few big blinds, or late in the tournament to battle for a big stack entering the late stages. Although many people seem to be thrilled when entering a coin-flip situation, most observers get the wrong idea. Most people are thrilled to enter these situations simply because they are not behind to begin with. As each separate coin-flip provides a 50/50 shot at winning the pot, the players are usually not thrilled to be ahead with a small pair vs. over-cards, but rather are thrilled to not be dominated.

Knocking Out Short Stacks

Your best opportunity out of the three scenarios discussed here, is always whenever you hold more chips than your opponent. This will automatically guarantee that you cannot be eliminated in the hand in which the coin-flip is taking place. If you are fortunate enough to be sitting on a fairly large stack entering the mid to late stages of a tournament, you will have various opportunities to enter pots with the short stacks that will continue to play aggressive. These short stacks will be battling the raising blinds, and any stack under around 10 big blinds will most likely only be making one move, all-in. These short stacks will be pushing with very marginal hands, and sometimes you will have to make a decision with marginal hands as well because you will not constantly be holding hands such as JJ, QQ, AK, KK or AA that guarantee a call. Some of the marginal hands you may be considering calling with when you have a short stack covered a few times over may be A10, KQ, KJ, 44,55, or 66. These hands vary greatly and it is important to consider a number of factors before calling a short stack's all-in.
You must first consider the short stack's position, if he or she sits in early position you may wish to fold these semi-strong hands, and stick with pairs above 88, and AQ or AK. If the short stack pushes in very late position you will have no trouble calling his or her all-in with the six hands listed above. If you are sitting in the big blind and the raiser has only 4 to 5 big blinds, you also can consider a call with an even weaker hand such as K10, A9, or 33, simply because you may be getting 2 to 1 on your money that you call with.

Pushing as a Short Stack

As discussed above, many short stacks including you may be pressured by the blinds to push all-in very often as the blinds continually rise. This is another case when you may have to enter a coin-flip situation because you will be called by a larger stack attempting to knock you out. If you hold around 10 big blinds with one of the six hands listed above, your all-in is a strong move because you force the remaining players at the table to have a very large hand, especially when you push in early position.
If you shove all-in and the players do not hold JJ, QQ, KK, AA, AK or AQ, you will most likely be entering a coin-flip situation, which is the best position you can hope for. In this case you have the opportunity to double up to nearly an average stack, and enter the later rounds with a strong chance to go far. You may even dominate the player that called, especially if it is a large stack, who may be calling with a very weak hand simply to knock you out.
In this case your hands can become increasingly weaker as you are in later position as well. This forces the hands in front of you to be semi-strong, and if they hold junk, you will take down the blinds and possibly add up to 20% of your stack on top of the 10 big blinds you hold.

Re-Raising Big Stacks

Another opportunity you may have in the late stages of tournaments to make a move may be while you hold a large stack. At this point the blinds will be fairly large, and the larger stacks are going to be pressuring the blinds, and hoping to steal them very often. These raises will often occur in very late position and will be made with any two cards that a large stack will hold.
If you are sitting in a blind or dealer position with a large stack directly behind you, this may be the opportunity to re-raise the big stack's pre-flop raise. It is almost guaranteed that this raise will be made by the player to take the blinds, and therefore a hand such as A9, A10, KQ, KJ, and pair above 44 should induce a re-raise. The big stack will almost always recognized he or she is far behind and surrender the hand immediately, awarding you the blinds and raise for a simple, precise, quick play.


Source: Internet (no author shown)

[bkniefel]

Your post is a great resource for acknolodging where you lie in the hand in short.

This is absolutely right, you are the one who makes the call on where you lie, no one will ever take away from this if you are aware of the math.

Now, what people do is a different story. - Something that I have been rec electing on for quite some time with some other members.

What determines your thoughts behind where you THINK you lie in the hand. I think this is the trillion dollar question. Pro's have mastered this.

[klinkman]

What this article fails to address though is what situations you should avoid coin flips. I'd like to point out a couple of them right now.

When you have a big stack and your opponent has a medium one-In a spot where you have a big lead and are dominating the table, something like 60-70bbs, you want to be raising and picking on the short stacks. It's okay to flip for 10-15 bbs in that spot, as if you lose you will still be in that position, and if you win you'll be even better off. But if you were to lose say 30 bbs, you would not be in that position anymore. With that smaller stack, you have to be much more careful when playing with the short stacks, and against the big stack that you just created. Because of this you have to be more careful about 3-betting and 4-betting likely coin flip hands like AQ, 99, 1010. When you make those reraises where your opponent is likely to call you really want to be on dominating hands, like AK or KK.

Another spot to be weary of coin flips is medium stack vs medium stack. The logic is similar to big stack vs medium stack, but the costs of a mistake are far more devistating. If you 3-bet all in you will likely have no fold equity, so you want to be on hands that dominate. You might need to let a hand like AJ go if you can't win enough to justify calling and need to raise all in, without any chance of getting your opponent to fold. Be very careful, I've lied to myself and said "he might fold" when there is really no chance since your shove offers 5-2 or even 3-1. So be very weary of shoving hands like AQ and 99 in those spots when your opponent is likely committed to calling.

Now all I need to do is take my own advice.

[KaciBlakely]

What this article fails to address though is what situations you should avoid coin flips. I'd like to point out a couple of them right now.

When you have a big stack and your opponent has a medium one-In a spot where you have a big lead and are dominating the table, something like 60-70bbs, you want to be raising and picking on the short stacks. It's okay to flip for 10-15 bbs in that spot, as if you lose you will still be in that position, and if you win you'll be even better off. But if you were to lose say 30 bbs, you would not be in that position anymore. With that smaller stack, you have to be much more careful when playing with the short stacks, and against the big stack that you just created. Because of this you have to be more careful about 3-betting and 4-betting likely coin flip hands like AQ, 99, 1010. When you make those reraises where your opponent is likely to call you really want to be on dominating hands, like AK or KK.

Another spot to be weary of coin flips is medium stack vs medium stack. The logic is similar to big stack vs medium stack, but the costs of a mistake are far more devistating. If you 3-bet all in you will likely have no fold equity, so you want to be on hands that dominate. You might need to let a hand like AJ go if you can't win enough to justify calling and need to raise all in, without any chance of getting your opponent to fold. Be very careful, I've lied to myself and said "he might fold" when there is really no chance since your shove offers 5-2 or even 3-1. So be very weary of shoving hands like AQ and 99 in those spots when your opponent is likely committed to calling.

Now all I need to do is take my own advice.

I think you have a good point but what I don't agree on is willing to lose 15bb. That still brings you down to almost the other persons point depending on short stacks and such. I wouldn't want to give up that advantage personally.

[$o$o$ucce$$ful]

This question is all situational. If we are talking about early in a tournament where a guy is pushing his whole stack with Midpair and we have AK i rather not risk my whole tournament unless I am the one ahead in the hand.
However if we are talking about late in a tournament where a double up or taking out a player will move me up the money ladder, or get me to the final table, then you bet your *** i will strap up my nikes and get ready to run.
Early in tournaments it is better to sit back and wait for a better sot then 50/50 to get all your chips in the middle.
However when you move the blinds up and get ITM races become a chance to gather some fire power, so it all depends what stage of the tournament we are in.

[$o$o$ucce$$ful]

Heres an article Kaci about playing AQ(the primary racing hand in hold em)
Daniel Negreanu used to call A-Q "1.4," named after how many million he has lost with it.

It is singlehandedly the biggest trouble hand in poker. A-Q is a Top 10 hand, but is not a premium hand. That distinction must be clear before we go any further.

Here are a couple of Top 10 Hold'em starting-hand lists for full tables:

Hellmuth's Top 10
Caro's Main Top 10

1. AA
2. KK

3. QQ

4. A-K suited

5. JJ

6. 10-10

7. 9-9

8. 8-8

9. A-Q suited

10. 7-7
1. AA
2. KK

3. QQ

4. J-J

5. A-K suited

6. A-Q suited

7. 10-10

8. A-K offsuit


9. K-Q suited

10. A-J suited


Hellmuth's mix is founded on a combination of probability, poker experience and feel, while Caro's list is strictly mathematics. Caro has three Top 10 starting-hand lists, one for full tables, one for heads-up, and one main list working as an average for the two.


The Poker Brat
The difference to notice between the two lists is the placement of A-Q by both players. Mathematically A-Q should end up in sixth place. It's the trouble-hand aspects of A-Q which have caused Hellmuth to demote A-Q down his list to No. 9.

A premium hand is one of the top five hands in this list. The order of the Top 5 isn't the same on both lists, but the hands are.

How to play the different hands pre-flop is covered in some other articles on the site, mainly this one: Hold'em Before the Flop: A Beginner's Guide. If you're a beginner, start here.

From this point on I'm going to assume you're an intermediate to advanced player, with the ability to make reads and tricky plays, and that you're confident enough to play marginal hands from mid position.

How A-Q Stacks Up

No matter what charts you use, A-Q suited is in the top 10. The first thing to accept is that A-Q suited is not a top 10 hand, but does make it into the top 20.

If you played ABC poker by following a chart of hands, A-Q suited (A-Qs) is one you would never play in early position, and would only play in an unraised or unopened pot in middle to late.

Being in the top 20 hands means that A-Qs and A-Qo are in the best 10% of possible starting hands. Of all the possible starting hands, only 5.85% of all possible hands are equal in strength to A-Qo, or stronger than it. A-Qs is only beat by 3.77% of all possible starting hands.

The average for A-Q is 4.81%. For this article we're going to use 5% as our number.

One thing to know about poker is that your math and odds only have to be close. If you can get it within a percent or two, that's all you need to know.

As long as your decisions are +EV, the true amount doesn't matter. Being 64% or 65% to hit makes no difference to the hand or how you'll play it; don't sweat the exact math.

Should You Raise?

Playing ABC poker, you will only ever be playing the top 20 starting hands. Just under 10% of the possible hands you can be dealt are playable in an ABC game.

On average you should be playing one hand per orbit, three hands per hour in live poker. Online poker play will have up to three times more hands dealt per hour on a single table.

If only 5% of hands are better than your A-Q, the odds are you have the most hand equity. With the most equity, you should be raising, and pumping the pot.

If only 10% of hands are playable, and this is in the middle of those playable ones, it should by all means be played, and be played hard.


Ladies and gentlemen, Mike Caro!
Unfortunately, poker isn't as straightforward as this. Things are never quite as obvious as they seem.

A great example I learned reading Mike Caro's new book Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice: Years ago, before people really began to study poker, there was very little scientific advice and knowledge about the game.

At this point in poker's life, many top players believed that J-T suited was the best starting hand in poker. It was the highest suited connector possible with full straight potential. It doesn't "dead end" on the top end as Q-J would.

If we look at A-Q only in the context of how it stacks up in the hand charts, I think we'll be missing some important aspects to the hand, working on only half-truths.

The truth is simple and obvious if we look at results from poker experience: A-Q does not win 95% of the time.

In the next article we'll continue dissecting A-Q, adding some more insight to the true value of the hand, and in part three we'll follow up with some suggestions on how to play it.

[KaciBlakely]

This question is all situational.

I couldn't agree more with you on this point but in poker its all situational to a point.

[$o$o$ucce$$ful]

I couldn't agree more with you on this point but in poker its all situational to a point.

Exactly. Great point as well. No question in poker can be a straight forward can i fold. Can I call. Can I do this Can I do that because its all situational.