[grandgnu]

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Thanks. I did have a read on him and put him on a medium sized pair. I was right. I still called as I had overbet in the first place. So he was a slight favorite. But I guess it was played wrong as it cost me my tournament when, really, I was doing ok and slowly progressing.I guess what I was trying to ask is, when is it right to force these 50 50 situations (I know that it's ok when you are trying to bust someone who is short stacked) and how many times should we expect to have to go through or provoke coin flip situation in a MT tourney that will go on for a minimum of 5 hrs until final table?

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I would say it's the right play if YOU are short-stacked and need to make a stand, or if the other player is short-stacked and you have the opportunity to bust him without hurting yourself. Another possibility is if you're facing a re-raise from a bully large stack who's just trying to get people out of pots, then you can push right back at him, your hand is strong enough to play against what might be a bluff.

As far as how many times you'll have to play these coin flip hands in a tournament? That's going to depend on how many players there are.

I played quite successfully three tournaments online in one week with 721 players (7-stud hi/lo finished 18th) and 892 players (omaha hi/lo finished 37th) and NL Hold Em (1989 players finished 31st). Unfortunately all were cheapie tourneys with $1 or $3 buy-ins, so not a lot of money for my effort.

In the NL tournament with that many players, my A/K and A/Q won the coin flips for me. And my J/J held up twice as well from what I recall. I think throughout that tourney I survived/played somewhere around 5-10 of those coin flips, it's been awhile. But you're also talking 2000 players and lots of maniacs cause the buy-in is only 3 bucks and they could care less.

Had some idiot raise with K/3 of spades after we were in the money, I held Q/Q and moved all-in (had 72K in chips, he had about 50K, I was in 10th chip position out of 70 players). He didn't raise too much and could have (and should have) folded his K/3 suited given that I had been showing down A/K, A/Q and pocket pairs all night and he still had 40-50K and plenty of opportunity (first place was getting 1300 bucks) but he called me.

And OF COURSE not one but TWO Kings came up on the board and he knocked my 72K stack down to 17K. I outlasted him, including having my K/Q best his A/A when I caught two kings on the board (payback rules!). But his poor play cost me the chips I needed to make a significant bid for that 1300 bucks. I won $21 instead. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]