Unnecessary Coin Flip in the Beginning of a SNG
Someone just explained to me that they won a SNG because all of their reads were correct. This didn’t sit well with me, because I have played in many tournaments where all of my reads were correct and I lost. I’ve called a guy’s shove with K-7 because I put him on Q high, he has QJ, flops 2 pair and I’m out. This happens in poker online, especially in SNG tournaments. It is very difficult to win a SNG if you lose coin flips.
The player got defensive when I told him that he was able to win the tournament because he won a coin flip and an argument ensued. Here is what happened.
In the first blind level of a 6-man turbo SNG, our hero raised to 90 (a 3x bet) with KQ. The villain shoved all-in for an equivalent chip stack. The hero assume that if the villain was comfortable with the strength of his hand, he would not have made this huge overbet. If he had a big pair he would not want to scare his poker opponent away, and if he had a hand like AK he might raise, but would be foolish to shove all-in and end the hand. Hero put the villain on a small pocket pair and made the call. The villain did have 99 and our hero hit his king to win the coin flip. With those chips he went on to make “correct” decisions and eventually on the SNG.
I told him that he made an unnecessary risk to take that coin flip so early in the game. In order to win the SNG, he did not need to take the risk of an even stack coin flip, but by choosing to take the flip, he now needed to win the flip in order to continue playing and eventually in the tournament. After deciding to take the flip, his ability to win the game was directly correlated to the outcome of the flip. While winning the flip would not guarantee winning the game, he now had to win the former to win the latter. He succeeded in both, but in an incredibly risky manner. There are spots where you need to shove or call all in hoping to have an edge in a flip, but choosing to stack off in a 50/50 with 50 BBs is just too risky. Remember this when you play poker online.
