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

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.

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.

[GutPunch]

why not call and play a flop with position?

[ThrillFactor]

[ 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.

[McMelchior]

[ 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)

[ThrillFactor]

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.

[PFrese]

[ 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.

[pfkaok]

[ 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.

[ThrillFactor]

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.