Taking gambles early on
We all have heard the theories about pushing small edges in NL tournaments. The survivalists say you need to play tight and look for good opportunities to slowly build a stack or double with a monster (i.e. big edge). Others look to get into a coin flip and take a 50/50 chance of doubling fast and then doing it again to build a superstack. Then, as the tournament progresses and you become more desparate, a coinflip may be all you can find so you realize you need to get lucky and need to go for it.
So let me give you a slightly contrived scenario and see how you would play it and why. You are down to three players and there are two payout spots ($600/$400). Each player is similarly skilled and has 10,000 chips. We are on the bubble and no one has an upper hand. The blinds are 5/10 (contrived part) and button folds and SB pushes in on you. You have essentially 1:1 calling odds. You hold 22 but you saw SB's cards and he has AKo. Therefore you know you are actually a 52/48 favourite.
What's your play and why?
So let me give you a slightly contrived scenario and see how you would play it and why. You are down to three players and there are two payout spots ($600/$400). Each player is similarly skilled and has 10,000 chips. We are on the bubble and no one has an upper hand. The blinds are 5/10 (contrived part) and button folds and SB pushes in on you. You have essentially 1:1 calling odds. You hold 22 but you saw SB's cards and he has AKo. Therefore you know you are actually a 52/48 favourite.
What's your play and why?
Comments
why risk your whole tournament life on a "know" coinflip when you have a huge stack (10,000) compared to the blinds (5/10) especially on the bubble with top 2 ITM? there is so much play left that there is really no reason to settle for a coinflip at this particular time.
just my opinion, but this "contrived" scenario you came up with does not relate to the original scenario you were talking about in the OP. looking to double or triple up early in coin flip situations in an MTT in order to have a chance at making a deep run is not the same as being on the bubble with a HUGE stack and (for some reason, god knows why) choosing to push all in on a "known" coin flip (even if you are a 2% favorite).
If I am reading your assumptions right, you have to call.
You are assuming everyone is equally skilled. Therefore you will never get a better edge than 51-2%.
Could be a good discussion if you re-think the scenario.
And to m_dolens, I know I was talking about early MTT strategy and my example is a bubble play. However, in MTTs with a payout structure, every time somebody leaves the tournament, everybody else is affected. It's just that the first guy leaving the tournament does not affect everybody nearly as much as the bubble guy leaving. However, the concept is still the same.
There's some more explanation and I'll give this 24hrs to percolate and see what analysis people can come with for their play.
calculate everyone's $ev (not cev) before the hand. now look at what it would be if you call and lose vs call and win. the button player would absolutely love it if you called here. can you see why?
this pretty much reduces to a HoH bubble question or even a sklansky folding AA on the bubble problem.
trivially easy fold here. do the math and let me know if KK is a good call here.
actually this is what i'm disagreeing with. i don't think that the concept is the same in these scenarios. like i stated in my first response, taking the chance on a coin flip scenario is the early stages of a MTT in order to double or triple up to gain a better chance at making a deep run is not the same as making the same play on the bubble. these are completely different situations which require completely different analyses imo.
Edit: and i also don't like (don't agree with) the idea that all three players are "equally skilled". first, i have no idea what that means, and second, someone ALWAYS has an advantage (or a disadvantage) in poker due to the nature of the game (for example, position, previous actions/reads, and even hole cards (i'm adding the last one since we are discussing a specific short term game and not considering the long term)).
For example I might limp in knowing I'm a 40/60 if the stacks are deep enough... and I have a postflop equity advantage... I'll fool around with suited connectors or small pairs...
It might cost me 1% of my stack or 1 BB to put someones whole stack at risk.
For example I might call a nit with 87s ...
In the famous QQ v. AKs early tournament scenario, Matt Matros gives complicated explanations of why calling would be correct. As multiple WSOP bracelet winner Bill Chen explains with his Theory of Doubling Up, in order for it to be correct to decline a 57-43 confrontation, one has to have nearly three times the average equity in the tournament. Nobody I know has this high a win rate, including me, so I would definitely call if this happens to me in the first hand of the WSOP. If this was a cash game (e.g., $100 all-in with 1/2 blinds), the correct $EV-maximizing play is to call. As long as you have the proper bankroll and have access to cash if you need to rebuy, you simply choose the action that has the highest expectation. Each time you make the correct call against the all-in "donktard" and take all his chips, you then shout, "SHIP IT, BITCHES!" :biggrin:
However, let's go backwards and add more players. Say we have 4 players in our scenario so we are one from the bubble. Without getting into the math, can we intuitively say that a coinflip is still -EV but the threshold has dropped from 62% down a bit. I think so. Now let's add in a lot more players, say the whole starting field. Does that +EV threshold ever get right to 50%. Probably not but for a big field it's probably pretty close.
This leads me to two conclusions. First, I would definitely want to be on the + side of the coinflip. And second, I think some coinflips are looking better than others like QQ vs AKo looks a lot better than 22 vs AKs (which I think AK has a slight edge here).
I know it's much more complicated than that for example when your Q or M is so low that you need to take a coinflip. Or the fact that if you know you are in a coinflip situation but you are the aggressor, you can use fold equity to add to your chance of winning the hand. But hey, who said this was simple.
In conclusion, if you say you would never pass up on a coinflip in an MTT, I would have to say you would be wrong.
Your Strategy for coin flips should be based solely on your skills compared to those of your opponents. If you are one of the best players...grind it out...and refuse to take slightly profitable coin flips for a large portion of your stack...being a good player should should be able to find a better spot....ON THE OTHER HAND....if you feel like you are outmatched take as many 50/50 shots you can get...maybe even slightly worse odds at a very tough table....IF U R NOT A GREAT PLAYER , by pushing in your chips in marginal situations...ie...AJ, 1010 etc... (PREFLOP) you can make the better players miserable by not allowing their skills to prevail....Good players hate sticking in all their money preflop except with AA.....good players will routinly fold hands such as AQ, JJ, maybe AK off early in MTT in it will cost all their money to see a flop