Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Last night in the 7.5k bodog I had a situation come up which has got me a lot recently and wanted to get some takes on it.

I am a very very tight player and it is not untypical for me to go 45 minutes at a time without playing a hand. When i do push I hope that my tight image counts for something, but I dont think a lot of people even notice table image.

Last night the blinds were at 150/300. The average stack was about 5500. i was sitting in seat 7 with with AKo at about 4800.

Utg+1 was sitting on about 3800 in chips. He mini-raises to 600. From his past play I put him on a range of (AK-AQ to 77-JJ).

I do not want to call the 600 because that will get me down to 4800. After his bet he is at 3200 so he does have some fold equity.

Now this is where I have problems. I am about 40% sure he has AK, probably AQ and about 60% he has a mid pair.

I am thinking he does not want to risk all his chips going heads up with me because I know my image is as tight as can be.

What should i do here,
A)save my chips for a better time?
B) call and see a flop? but what if dont hit the flop then i have no idea where i am.
C)Push all in, hope he folds and if not the worst I am is a coin flip. But do I want to take a coin flip at this time?

When is the propert time to make an all in push with a coinflip likely?

what would you do?

I pushed, he thought for a moment then called, flipped over 99 which held up and shortly after I was out when my 77 could not hold off an A8

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

nice play. only thing i'm not sure of is how you excluded QQ-AA from his range. But your going to have to gamble at some point in the tourney to accumulate chips and as you said you do have some FE. nice play.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]

I am a very very tight player and it is not untypical for me to go 45 minutes at a time without playing a hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

Being tight is good a lot of times, but if you're THAT tight it will be very hard for you to build up a stack and go very deep. it does no good to just try to survive, if you do so without constantly looking to build your stack.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

did i know that he didnt have AA-QQ, no, but i pay a lot of attention and makes lots of notes on players during a MTT. I felt I had a good read on him. Sure I could have been wrong, i have been wrong many times before, but i felt I had a good read and I was right.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

why not call and play a flop with position?

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

FWIW, I'd auto-push here 90% of the time. The other 10% would be those times when the min-raise seemed out of place for my opponent, and I'd have to evaluate deeper.

The reason I'm responding however is to pass along a sobering piece of advice that was handed down to me a year ago on this forum. Trying to exclude AA-QQ here from your opponent's range is just wishful thinking. You're trying to ignore possibilities either during or after-the-fact to help justify your play. There is, of course, a big difference between putting your opponent on an accurate range vs. assigning him some holdings that give your hand the best chance of winning.

Unless you have a huge database on this opponent that shows he has NEVER min-raised in EP with AA-QQ, then they must be included.

That being said, against most villians, it's still an easy push.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
did i know that he didnt have AA-QQ, no, but i pay a lot of attention and makes lots of notes on players during a MTT. I felt I had a good read on him. Sure I could have been wrong, i have been wrong many times before, but i felt I had a good read and I was right.

[/ QUOTE ]

See my other post.

There's absolutely no way that you can have enough info on your opponent 2 hrs into an MTT to have this sort of read.

The fact that you were right this time has nothing to do that you made a flawed assumption. MOST of the time he WON'T have AA-QQ. But sometimes he will.

I'm really not trying to come down on you here. Just trying to be helpful and open your eyes to this flawed thinking.

Stop and consider what I'm saying.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Thanks. you are right, he could have had AA-QQ, but at the time I didnt think he did. i made that assesment at the time, i may have just been making that assesment in my head to justify what I was doing, who realy knows.

Thinking now i should have made it about 2k and see what he does, wouldnt have looked so desperate

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]

Thinking now i should have made it about 2k and see what he does, wouldnt have looked so desperate

[/ QUOTE ]


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Don't even consider reraising 40% of your stack with AK. What happens when you miss the flop (as you will 2/3 of the time) and he bets into you?

Given stack v. blind sizes in this hand, if you're going to raise it needs to be a push. If someone else wants to make an argument for flat-calling and playing a flop, I'll leave that to them. Personally I don't like it.

Folding is out of the question. Calling has a whole slew of disadvantages. And raising mandates a push based on stack size.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

1,294,501,824 games 1.204 secs 1,075,167,627 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) / tie (%)

Hand 1: 47.9422 % [ 00.41 00.07 ] { AKo }
Hand 2: 52.0578 % [ 00.45 00.07 ] { AA-77, AKs-AQs, AKo-AQo }


You're behind his range if your guess is accurate, but you have tons of FE against over 1/2 of his range and there's over 20% of your stack in dead money in the pot.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

I think this is an extremely easy push. You are even money against his likely hand range and you have tons of fold equity and lots of dead money.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
There's absolutely no way that you can have enough info on your opponent 2 hrs into an MTT to have this sort of read.

The fact that you were right this time has nothing to do that you made a flawed assumption.


[/ QUOTE ]I have no idea why you write this, but it's bad.

If OP considers it unlikely the OR has AA thru QQ, then that's his read, and since he has been observant and played the OR for a while it should not be challenged.

What you in effect are saying is that we can't make and trust reads online. This is plain and simply wrong.

Most players are highly predictable, even the insanely LAGgy ones. This is a basic assumption for playing online.

To Dogger: Following your read - which I, have I not made myself clear, believe is pivotal - you're a small favorite:
Hand 1: 51.9621 % 42.88% 09.08% { AcKd }
Hand 2: 48.0379 % 38.96% 09.08% { JJ-77, AQs+, AQo+ }

As such you should play - and the fact that the cost of sitting one orbit approaching 10% of your stack (and probably soon to increase) certainly should remove any residual doubt.

Flat calling for 12% of your stack and a couple of players behind you to act is not something I'm fond of. Especially since I read your selfproclamed "very very thigh"ness to mean that you only have little confidence in your post-flop playing abilities. Playing AK after missing the flop is not for beginners.

I believe it's a clear push.

Don't let others discourage you from trusting your reads.

Best,

McMelchior (Johan)

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Oh come on now.

Even if he's seen his opponent pick up 1 each AA,KK, and QQ in the first two hours and open-raise 3-4x each time, he can't discount that he may have one of those 3 hands this time and is mixing it up trying to get action.

I'm not seeing monsters here, and No, I'm not implying that you can't develop reads online. In fact, I understand completely when he says that he believed that it was unlikely that villians had AA-QQ. BUT YOU CAN'T DISCOUNT THEM COMPLETELY. They have to be considered, even if at a discounted probability.

In this particular hand it doesn't make a difference. Hero's a slight favorite without them in the range, a slight dog with them. It's an easy push either way with the dead money.

But to say that you can totally eliminate them as possibilities based on 2 hours of observation is foolish.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

I agree with both of you. You can get read online but it is hard to be 100% sure Vilain doesn't have AA-QQ. However, how do you know he is not doing that with 66 or AJs, or KQs??? Nobody knows so you base your decision on what range you actually think he has. Of course, when you are called you won't see the times he had 55 or QJs, you will ojnly see the time you were wrong and he had AA. I think that he could have AA-QQ but I also think that if you strongly believe he doesn't have that, you can base your decision on this.

I wasn't playing but personnaly, I wouldn't discount the fact the AA-QQ could min-raise UTG or in EP.

For the hand: I push almost everytime. You are tight, so you must push the good hands you have. I think he did a bad play, calling with 99 (at best 45-55) but you can't control that.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Of course you are correct - there are many more hands that can be in the OR's range. But when figuring his range, I tend to err on the side of worse-case scenario. We're in a dead heat with my given range, making it a pretty easy push. If I gave villian too much credit, then that makes it even better for me.

The tragic mistake would be to not give the OR enough credit.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

In my reasonably limited experience of online MTTs, the mini-raise utg with AA seems to be pretty common. The vast majority of people with AA utg seem to either flat call or mini-raise and then pray for the re-raise so I wouldn't discount it but most people seem to flat call or mini-raise low pps too.
However, if the table has been together a while and you are observant and feel that villain is too, then I think you can discount it based on that. He's only going to slow play AA utg or in ep if he's pretty damn sure he's getting re-raised. His nightmare in that scenario is that it gets called round and he's first to act in a family pot so if you feel that he feels that someone at the table is likely to reraise an utg mini-raise then you can't discount it. If, on the other hand, any ep raises are being folded round and you are pretty sure villain is aware of this, then i think you can more or less discount AA.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Here is my short opinion.

Pushing > Stop and Go > Calling > Folding

If you haven't been playing a hand for 45 minutes and pass on AK, then what are you waiting ON? AA, KK, QQ? I push here quite often, with an agressive table, I would maybe call, then push a raise.

BTW, does Dogger = Bernard Lee?

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Is Stop n Go a joke? You will push 4200 into a 1200 pot? You are not even foirst to act after the flop??? You do have FE before the flop??? Please learn or take the time to understand the case before saying anything.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

I feel this is the right play, reraising 2k. I prefer to reraise OOP and call in position usually.

If the player is not a 2+2er or on that skill level the 1st thing that goes through his mind is "He's got AK, I call because I'm ahead" or "He's got a small pair, I call because I'm 50/50"

They don't think about stack sizes, odds, the possibiliy they are out of the tournament. The annoyance of being reraised all in gives them an excuse to call with lessor hands and pairs. See it all the time.

Now if you reraise a good amount.. then it looks suspicious. First thing they think of is AA or KK or even QQ. Now when the board comes A K or Q they fold.

I try not to push all in at tournaments. I would rather reraise to make them think then bet the flop.

If you think about it lets say you push your AK 4 times and each thime they have AQ. Well to win 4 times in a row is 30%

Lets mix it up. dominated 1/2 of the time, coin flip 1/2 the time. 14% of the time you are going to win all 4.

I would rather win a smaller pot 4x 100% of the time then push 4x on 75% win rate.

Now if your field is mostly better players that understand pot odds, and hands then yes I can see it.

Most of my field (90%) are average to poor players. Very few with pot odds concepts or risk analysis.

With 90% bad players you will have few that bust and few that have monster stacks. The good players either go up or down slow in stacks. Their ratio is equal to the monster stacks of the loose bad players (because of the 10:1 ratio). Since most of the players are loose they will call your push more. 100 player tournament with 90 bad and 10 good your probably looking at 12 with stacks bigger than yours, 13 with stacks that are close to yours. 20 with stacks that can cripple you. Not sure if this makes sense or not. But as I play live tournaments I push less and less and seem to go farther and farther. I protect my stack.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
They have to be considered, even if at a discounted probability.
[..]
But to say that you can totally eliminate them as possibilities based on 2 hours of observation is foolish.

[/ QUOTE ]Sir, I respectfully disagree with your approach.
We are talking about reads. We are not talking about absolute knowledge. This is a very basic and important distinction.

Reads are an approximation to facts. A read can by nature never be made with 100% certainty. But: Reads are our one and only basis for adding information about our opponents holdings to our determination of what is the best play at any given time.

Saying that the OP can't discount certain of OR's possible holdings is correct, but it's also meaningless and therefore shouldn't be done. If we can't discount AA, KK or QQ, then we can't discount 72o, K3 or JTs (the latter being much more likely). Actually, we can't discount the min-raise as a plain and simple mis-click!

In a tournament situation the only practical MO must be to estimate likely holdings based on our observations and discount all other holdings, knowing that "of course he could have XY". Here the assumption must be that holdings our read discounts as unlikely stronger holdings are balanced out by the unlikely weaker holdings.

Any other approach is destructive to our game, by making the evalutation unwieldy and impossible within the time frame allowed.

And, much worse, claiming that the OR must include hands that based on his read are unlikely is detrimental to the development of good reading skills - and should not happen here.

Best,

McMelchior (Johan)

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Fireball, was asking for advice because obvioulsy i am not the most experienced player in the world. No need to be an arse hole

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Thinking now i should have made it about 2k and see what he does, wouldnt have looked so desperate

[/ QUOTE ]


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Don't even consider reraising 40% of your stack with AK. What happens when you miss the flop (as you will 2/3 of the time) and he bets into you?

Given stack v. blind sizes in this hand, if you're going to raise it needs to be a push.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think there are some merits in re-raising with say, 1500-1800 in this specific situation. Miini-raises can range from slow-played monsters to probing bets by mid-PPs trying to get a feel where they stand. By re-raising you are representing a big hand. If villain re-raises, muck, lick your wounds hoping to get a decent hand with your short stack. In the buy-ns that I play, I have yet to encounter a re-re-raise below JJ, Ditto if he calls and bets out on the flop. However, there is the likelihood (I'm not a math guy and don't know how to calculate this) that villain checks if the flop contains overcards to his PP or misses with his AK, AQ or maybe AJ which I can then take advantage of by pushing. I also find that in lower buy-ins it is quite often to see insta-call of pushes with small/mid-PPs. These are the players who are either afraid or indecisive to play post-flop and most likely check if flop is missed.

Correct me please, if my thought process is convoluted.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Your tournament situation dictates that you look for a "coin flip" - you're below average stack and M is 10ish. But if I'm going to flip I either want the heavy end of the coin, some fold equity, or some significant dead money - none of that applies. You're a dog to his range, the blinds don't give you pot odds when called, and he raised UTG+1 for 20% of his stack - he's not going any where. I think you call here and play postflop - your chip EV on a call-pre/fold-post is about the same as your push and you may not have to fold.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Making it 2k for what reason? Your not folding if he sticks in the extra 1k? And if a bigger stack comes in and reraises you, you have shoved in almost 50% and are committed anyway. Just go all-in your like 50/50 against his range if you include AQ assuming no FE, but you do have FE if he's a good player.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

I raise to about 2400-3000 this way im committing my stack and it looks a little more like I have kk/aa. I'm not throwing this away and I'd rather not call and see if flop considering I only have 16BB

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Last night in the 7.5k bodog I had a situation come up which has got me a lot recently and wanted to get some takes on it.

I am a very very tight player and it is not untypical for me to go 45 minutes at a time without playing a hand. When i do push I hope that my tight image counts for something, but I dont think a lot of people even notice table image.

Last night the blinds were at 150/300. The average stack was about 5500. i was sitting in seat 7 with with AKo at about 4800.

Utg+1 was sitting on about 3800 in chips. He mini-raises to 600. From his past play I put him on a range of (AK-AQ to 77-JJ).

I do not want to call the 600 because that will get me down to 4800. After his bet he is at 3200 so he does have some fold equity.

Now this is where I have problems. I am about 40% sure he has AK, probably AQ and about 60% he has a mid pair.

I am thinking he does not want to risk all his chips going heads up with me because I know my image is as tight as can be.

What should i do here,
A)save my chips for a better time?
B) call and see a flop? but what if dont hit the flop then i have no idea where i am.
C)Push all in, hope he folds and if not the worst I am is a coin flip. But do I want to take a coin flip at this time?

When is the propert time to make an all in push with a coinflip likely?

what would you do?

I pushed, he thought for a moment then called, flipped over 99 which held up and shortly after I was out when my 77 could not hold off an A8

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't tell us results until later, it biases replies/will get you fewer replies.

You're right, donks online barely notice table image, it's annoying but whatever.

I think it's definatly fine to push or call here, it really depends on you as a player. Personally I think I'd have called here and seen the flop. I like that line better just b/c it lets me hide my hand, and probably wins me more in the long run compared to pushing (which probably would often get a fold). You have position on him, might as well use it. Pushing gives that advantage up.

I dont think this situation is so much about you putting him on hand, as it is about playing it out. In other words, you're really confident it's a flip, but in reality people often will have a worse ace or king here. So your push is right just based on knowing that you are *at worst* a coinflip, not *definatly* a coinflip.

Incidently, I hate his call. I hate him min raising, he's playing that stupid hand like it's a monster. The reality is that he's UTG+1 with 12 blinds. He should have open pushed if he was going to play it.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

push in this situation every time.
the reasons being:
1.your short stack,you may never get a better hand dealt than this.
2.you have AK ,the worse position you can be in is that he has AA, even against KK you have outs.if he has any of them hands then so be it.it was not meant to be.any other hand your almost 50/50.

3.if you push all in you will get to see all the 5 cards and you will also get to isolate the raiser and getting heads up with him if he calls which is in favor of a hand like AK .the reason is that in heads up situations top pair is usually enough to win the hand so getting to see the 5 cards is very important.

4.you have some fold equity so he may fold in which case you win the hand right there which is not a bad pot.

never ever fold AK in this situation,its a very powerful hand in this situation.
the only reason why you would think abt folding AK here is if you had a very very larg stack and the villian also had a very larg stack that he could bust you with.in this case you could argue that you have enough chips to buy you enough time to look for a better spot.
but here you dont have that many chips at all.
also the worse way you can play this which is even worse than folding is to just call.
if you just call,miss the flop,then you have no idea wheather he has AQ or KK if he pushes.you will have to fold or take a chance to see the other two cards.either way you ahve made a mistake and the villian has gained from your mistake.
hope this makes sense.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There's absolutely no way that you can have enough info on your opponent 2 hrs into an MTT to have this sort of read.

The fact that you were right this time has nothing to do that you made a flawed assumption.


[/ QUOTE ]I have no idea why you write this, but it's bad.

If OP considers it unlikely the OR has AA thru QQ, then that's his read, and since he has been observant and played the OR for a while it should not be challenged.

What you in effect are saying is that we can't make and trust reads online. This is plain and simply wrong.


Don't let others discourage you from trusting your reads.

Best,

McMelchior (Johan)

[/ QUOTE ]

Johan - dont confuse "reads" with Probobilities. I agree that there is no way that you can say, oh he raise 3x the BB there, his range is jj-77 or ak - whatever, but he could not have AA, KK, or QQ. The is simply silly. Of course he could have AA - QQ and of course he could bet 3x the BB with them. Heck, that is what good players do - they bet their monsters, just like they bet their average hands.

What our hero is doing here is saying that I do not THINK he has AA-QQ since the odds of him having one of those is 1 in 230ish and 1 in 80 or so that he has anyone of those hands. And, since I have AK, the odds are furhter reduced. That is completely logical and accurate decuctive reasoning, but it is NOT a read.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Let me correct my statement. My reraise would be 2.5 to 3x his raise. 2000 is prob too much. 1800 seems right.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Is Stop n Go a joke? You will push 4200 into a 1200 pot? You are not even foirst to act after the flop??? You do have FE before the flop??? Please learn or take the time to understand the case before saying anything.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, it was a joke. You did, however, succeed in making yourself look like an arse and a looney. Getting upset like that on a forum is kind of sad.

However, I stand by:

Pushing > Calling > Folding

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Your tournament situation dictates that you look for a "coin flip" - you're below average stack and M is 10ish. But if I'm going to flip I either want the heavy end of the coin, some fold equity, or some significant dead money - none of that applies. You're a dog to his range, the blinds don't give you pot odds when called, and he raised UTG+1 for 20% of his stack - he's not going any where. I think you call here and play postflop - your chip EV on a call-pre/fold-post is about the same as your push and you may not have to fold.

[/ QUOTE ]

How is there not enough money in the pot to be significant dead money? There's 20% of Hero's stack in the middle. If that is not "significant" dead money, then you are essentially saying is that we should wait for a time when there is so much money in the pot that we would have zero fold equity because pushing would give anyone the odds to call with just about any reasonable hand.

If the OP folds even 10% of the time, then we have a huge overlay on a coinflip with T1000 already in the middle. I think OP folds more like 20% of the time, and pushing is just about mandatory.

Also, you say that the OP is not going anywhere. That's your logic for letting him see a flop and blowing you off your hand 66% of the time with a bet, even though you have 50% pot equity right now? If he isn't going anywhere, why do you want to see a flop with him with your 2 overcards for T600? So you can fold a flop and have even less fold-equity later? Although I guess it doesn't matter in your world, where fold equity is always zero anyway because villains never fold.

And what does "The blinds don't give you pot odds when called" mean? Are you saying that their T450 is irrelevant to the potodds calculation because they are too small? Or are you saying that if one of them calls it's bad for you? Neither statement makes sense.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

While I certainly do NOT argue with anyone advocating a push here, there is another play that could be better --

Calling, and then pushing the flop is not a bad option, if overcards to his pair come on the flop, he cant call. Meaning. If you flat call the 600, and the board comes QT4 and you push to his weak opening bet, then he will have a very hard time calling your all in.

By pushing preflop, you make his decision easier, right? Meaning - he can immediately rule out AA-QQ since you wuld mostly not play them so fast. He will probobly and correctly put you on two big cards, and then decide if he wants to take the coin flip (with the heavier side of the coin). So, you made his decision easy.

BUT, by just calling you make it much harder on him. You could have ANYTHING. You could be slowplaying aces, you could have suited connectors, you could have a smaller pair. You deprive him of anything that tells him what you really have. THen, he is out of position postflop. If overcards come up, he can't safely push. He can only bet. or check. If he pushes, fine you fold and lose 600. If he checks, you steal the pot. If he bets, you steal the pot.

The more I play this game, the more I am starting to look for situations to make my opponent make hard decisions and not easy ones. I think this could be just such an opp.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
While I certainly do NOT argue with anyone advocating a push here, there is another play that could be better --

Calling, and then pushing the flop is not a bad option, if overcards to his pair come on the flop, he cant call. Meaning. If you flat call the 600, and the board comes QT4 and you push to his weak opening bet, then he will have a very hard time calling your all in.

By pushing preflop, you make his decision easier, right? Meaning - he can immediately rule out AA-QQ since you wuld mostly not play them so fast. He will probobly and correctly put you on two big cards, and then decide if he wants to take the coin flip (with the heavier side of the coin). So, you made his decision easy.

BUT, by just calling you make it much harder on him. You could have ANYTHING. You could be slowplaying aces, you could have suited connectors, you could have a smaller pair. You deprive him of anything that tells him what you really have. THen, he is out of position postflop. If overcards come up, he can't safely push. He can only bet. or check. If he pushes, fine you fold and lose 600. If he checks, you steal the pot. If he bets, you steal the pot.

The more I play this game, the more I am starting to look for situations to make my opponent make hard decisions and not easy ones. I think this could be just such an opp.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hero is in seat 7. If you think that calling this bet will make the OR check to you, you are engaging in very wishful thinking.

Calling here to "re-evaluate after the flop" just accomplishes a couple of really bad objectives:

1) it confronts you with a big flop bet 66% of the time when all you have is Ace-high, but could be way ahead.
2) it gives one or more of the blinds great odds to call and hit their hand.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

[ QUOTE ]
By pushing preflop, you make his decision easier, right? Meaning - he can immediately rule out AA-QQ since you wuld mostly not play them so fast. He will probobly and correctly put you on two big cards, and then decide if he wants to take the coin flip (with the heavier side of the coin). So, you made his decision easy.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is also horrifically results-oriented. We know that villain has 99. How would Villain's decision be easy if he has 44? Or if he has AQ?

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

My point in pushing preflop in this situation is that you are basically shouting that you have AK or AQ. (ok, maybe small pairs, say 55-99?). My point in offering this alternative line is that by simply calling you are denying the villian information. You keep him guessing and he is OOP pre flop. He then has to decide if he is willing to push or call all of his chips with an underpair.

As I said early in my post, I would not argue with a push and I normally play it like that as well, but after thinking about how easy we made it for the Villian to put us on a hand and make the correct decision (FTOP stuff), I thought that just calling could force the villian to make a mistake.

Re: Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?
 

Im positive this hand would not have been posted if OP won.