Avoiding coinflips

I've done much better by avoiding coinflips, but what do you do with preflop all-ins by your opponent when holding KK or QQ?

That's not a coin flip situation, u have a made pair. Depends on when u seat ofc, and if there is anyone else behind you to react. I folded Q's once because i was one place away from cash. You have to call with those hands, what are the chances for the other guy to have K's or A's, slim.

Phoenix14 said:

I've done much better by avoiding coinflips, but what do you do with preflop all-ins by your opponent when holding KK or QQ?

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Hi, I have been dwelling on the "avoiding coin flips " idea for a while now, i think it's great .
On your problem, it would depend on who/table image the player is, how many chips we both have, and where abouts in the tournament we are ?
I have had idea that being good at folding allows one to go far in poker, it sorta sounds counter productive, work in progress.
If extremely serious about the tournament i can fold everything below AA if I have to , the trick is how serious can you be , and definitely where we are in the tourney, i could probably fold kk below if I'm more than 35bb or so early levels to an allin peflop shove, but around say 20bb maybe level 6 or higher, would probably call.... those are rough ideas though as it will definitely depend and my opponents table image, i could also fold early levels if 2 or more players are already allin,
I have been (semi preaching ) saying that poker is more than just any 1 pair, however how our opponents play counts for a large part of this,
If they keep forcing decisions with a 3rd of my stack sized bets etc, well at some point i will fight back, just feels that at times the quality of poker skill will be slowly going down though. ...

Hey, I’m going to give you the most unskilled answer to this question!!!!
Just decide if you want to continue playing in the tournament.
If u don’t care call the coin flip.
If u do care, fold

It totally depends on the spot. How aggressive has the shover been? If they've been shipping it frequently it's less likely they're only raising premium hands. How many people are behind? If there are many people left to act or people with the same or bigger stack sizes we might not be heads up, reducing our equity. What stage of the tournament is it and how much of our stack will we be risking? You can't win a tourney in the early stages but you can certainly lose it.

All in preflop, especially multiway, is thin ice in tournament poker. Just ask my WCOOP 200k gtd AA in the early stages which were cracked all in pre by AKo when the flop considerately fell QTJ... nh gg

the best thing is to come up reasonably hoping not to meet with Ace and looking to run hand in hand to the possible connectors of ladder or color if a re-raise all in without connecting your trio proceed with caution luck greetings:star:

Phoenix14 said:

I've done much better by avoiding coinflips, but what do you do with preflop all-ins by your opponent when holding KK or QQ?

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man its tough to fold those hands but u might want to if there are more then two callers before you i feel like calling an all in with 3 or more players in the pot you have agreat chance at lossing

KK or QQ is still a live gamble with 5 cards to come at 30% with one Ace in their hand and if they are suited 34.5%. In MTTs you need to win all your coin flips and your 30%+ to win the tourney.

All ins are almost always a gamble objectively speaking.

You shouldn't avoid coinflips, you should avoid spots that are not profitable. If your coinflip is profitable ev wise and icm wise, then why avoid it?

Phoenix14 said:

I've done much better by avoiding coinflips, but what do you do with preflop all-ins by your opponent when holding KK or QQ?

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You can maybe find a fold with QQ in some situations, I rarely do. I can't really justify folding KK preflop.

I agree with the above poster. Even early in a tournament, I don't think I'm folding KK/AA to a single all-in. I might fold KK if there was a 4-bet in front of me, which will very rarely happen. For coin flips, you generally only want them when you are short-stacked or if the other person's stack is much lower than yours where you can take the loss without sacrificing too much of your stack.

Oh man, this is the essence of poker, isn't it. You have the second best 2 card hand in poker. You know that this is a 7 card game and there are a lot of cards still to come. You know that an unimproved pair is no guaranteed winner by a long shot. You know if this ends up multi-way, and an A hits the board, you are not even favored to win this hand. Your tournament life is on the line.

This is when i say to myself, "I hate poker", and then I call the damn bet. My own personal rules state that I NEVER go ALL-IN preflop when I only know 2 out of my 7 cards. My own personal rules say NEVER invest more than 60% of my stack in this type of situation. If I know so much, why do I call with these damn K's everytime.

I suppose this is why i am still seaking my first million, I don't have the discipline to do what I think I know is right.

We try to avoid coin flips but it is impossible to do so in tournament. Got to win your flips in order to go deep in tourney.

with the hand you mentioned i usually call. sometimes you get thoses AA and there is nothing you can do. but usually depending on the player they are usually with marginal hands trying to steal the blinds.

I find this really annoying especially early on. You get someone going all in and you have KK. You call and lose you’re done but if you call and win you have a large stack and can pressure the table. It seems when I call with KK they end up with AA and if I fold and someone else calls then end up having JJ. Lol

Phoenix14 said:

I've done much better by avoiding coinflips, but what do you do with preflop all-ins by your opponent when holding KK or QQ?

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you have to flip with such strong holecards otherwise you will be blinded out.:fight:

Phoenix14 said:

I've done much better by avoiding coinflips, but what do you do with preflop all-ins by your opponent when holding KK or QQ?

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Gotta win the coin flip, but usually only after I have a slight read on the person shoving. Early on? Most likely some suited A6. It's odd though, I love KK and find myself hitting a set with it more often than they pull out an A on the board, but QQ? Guaranteed a King and an Ace will hit the board. I mean it's ridiculous, I'd almost prefer JJ over QQ for no logical reason.

Phoenix14 said:

I've done much better by avoiding coinflips, but what do you do with preflop all-ins by your opponent when holding KK or QQ?

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I think you must play coin flips on tournament,you can avoid but,some hands AK,AQ when you must shove and you be called with 88,99,10 you can do anything so if you want to win tournament you must play coin flips because in that situation you can double up and go to final table or lose and be just in cash,50:50 must play,on some tournaments you won on some lose but you can win tournament like that.....and coin flip is when you have a pocket pair like 1010 and your opponent have two cards above you,KK vs AK not coin,QQ vs AK its is.....

Depends, avoiding coin flips all together unbalance your range and make you easily exploitable by those that find you folding often to shoves. This is very disadvantage to stages of the game where you're short stacked and definitely need to steal blinds or unfortunately, risk it all for a double-up.

At some point in the tournament it’s impossible to avoid coin flips. If you are trying to win the tournament you are going to inevitably be in flipping situations. The best we can do is get our hands in good and hope for the best. If we sit there waiting for aces or kings then we will no doubt blind off eventually. We can make good decisions based on table reads and player dynamics. Ideally we can attempt to play smaller pots until we have more information but that’s not always feasible. In the long run hands like QQ and KK are dominating most opponents especially those players shoving smaller stacks and you shouldn’t be afraid to call. Building a stack will position oneself to put up good results.

Avoiding coin flips early in a tournament, maybe. Eventually, you need to be all in pre-flop. If your chances are close to 50-50, good work.

it's hard to avoid coin flips in tournies..but it really depends on who ur facing

Seems like I lose QQ more then I win. Dang. Someone with an AX calls and an A always comes. I would not call with an AX. Would you?
Of course if I had a big stack against a small stack I would always call.

It's ofc better to avoid coinflips, but in tournaments you won't have another option at some point.

i'm the wrong guy to ask. my track record for coin flips is 934,546,343,474,457,975 losses to 11 wins