How long to wait to coinflip?

[sactokid544]

How long will you wait in a tournament to play a coinflip?

Obviously, in the early levels, I don't see anyone doing it.

Do you wait for a certain M? Do you wait until antes begin to hit?

I was mid-way through a donkament on stars and I raised UTG with JJ. I had an M of about 20. I got reraised all-in, which was obviously a massive overbet. I was 99% sure he had AQ or AK because he had done this 2 times before but 3-bet normally with QQ.

Obviously, my stack isn't in any desperation, but I knew I was a coinflip. Would you ever call mid-way through the tournament with an M of 20?

I know that to win tournaments you have to get lucky in some coinflips and 60/40 type situations, but when is it actually worth it? Obviously, with a short-stack/low M this question becomes null.

Or am I pondering a dumb question? lol

[Jernej Zorec]

if i think its +ev i call or ship, even if its first hand of a mtt

[lwestatbus]

A long time ago I wrote about a series of tournaments being a series of repeated bets. That is,in addition to each tourny having a whole series of hands each repeated entry into a similar tournament is also a series of bets, they just take longer to play out. But one new factor introduced in a series of tournaments is the investment in time it takes to play each one. Think about the heartbreak of having invested some amount of time into a tournament (along with the $ buy-in of course) only to bust out short of the bubble after having wasted all of that time.

I assume that by "donkament" you mean that the tourny was priced low enough to attract a lot of donkeys. There are probably a lot of players where the time it takes to play a tournament is much more valuable than the buy-in until you get deep enough to see the potential for some serious payback according to the tourny's payoff structure.

Getting to the point (finally), in such a situation coin flips early may make a lot of sense. You get to establish a comfortable chip stack early which you can (hopefully) use to make those higher-risk/higher-payoff gambles that can take you deep in the tourny. If you lose the coin flip you get to move on to the next tourny (or get back to work) without having invested a lot of time grinding toward the money bubble. I've begun to wonder if some pretty irrational play I've seen in the $2 tournys I play might actually make sense from this perspective.

I've also wondered if you need two sets of styles. One for the repeated tourny that you play every day or more often and a different style for the rare tourny, that one with a higher buy-in and a significantly higher potential payoff. This thinking has also had me deeply suspicious of the strictly quantitative analysis I've seen in a lot of tourny books where they write if it's +EV based on the chips involved then it is a good bet. If the analysis doesn't include the bet's potential for launching you further in the tourny and the payoff structure then I think the analysis is incomplete.

[miaowmiaowchowface]

if i think its +ev i call or ship, even if its first hand of a mtt

end

[sactokid544]

if i think its +ev i call or ship, even if its first hand of a mtt

end

So it's that easy? +EV Ship it? Do you only mean for donkaments or is this for ALL MTT's?

What if it's early in the WSOP Main Event? And you have the same read? You still ship it because you are getting small equity in that coinflip?... I think I would fold and look for a better spot to ship it with a greater +EV..

[Jernej Zorec]

i suppose wsop me is a tiny bit different due to the sheer fact that ur very deep and field is soft, and structure is slow
and live nits probably dont ship hands u flip against like they do online
and its probably more +ev to abuse the shit out of them

but yeah its that easy

[REDMAN]

I do not agree with the plus EV ship advice at all. I believe it depends on if you believe you can get your money in a better spot. If I was playing with players that were better than i in might take a shot but for the most part i believe i can get my money in much better than 50/50. If i did not believe this i would not be playing the game at all.

[Northern Hillbilly]

I do not agree with the plus EV ship advice at all. I believe it depends on if you believe you can get your money in a better spot. If I was playing with players that were better than i in might take a shot but for the most part i believe i can get my money in much better than 50/50. If i did not believe this i would not be playing the game at all.

Agreed with that

[HalfSugar]

There is scared poker discussion going on here.

[Felting]

So it's that easy? +EV Ship it? Do you only mean for donkaments or is this for ALL poker?

There, I fixed your

Answer is the latter btw.

[Felting]

There is scared poker discussion going on here.

Well, they have to crawl before they walk don't they?

[golddog]

I'd kill to get up to a coinflip.

Seriously, though, what everyone else says, unless it's a situation where you're on the money/pay jump bubble or something, where just folding may be more +real money EV.

Which I managed to screw up just the other day to get bounced two from the money. Sigh.