To Flip or not to Flip?

I made the journey to the Fox Poker Club for their main event this weekend and very early on had a hand that I think is worth a little discussion, players often ask whether you would take a flip early on in a tournament to double your stack, usually the response is no as the variance is too high and the double stack is not worth twice as much as a single stack (tournament chips are not linear in value, that is the most valuable chip is your last one as once you lose it you are out, similarly each extra chip you have is worth slightly less than the previous one). For these reasons this refusal to double or nothing early doors is quite a sensible one in my opinion, but poker is not a game of absolutes as the hand I am going to discuss will illustrate.

First off a little background information that is important, the tournament is a 2 day live event with a £400 + £35 buyin and a £10 optional dealer bonus, the starting stack is 25,000 +  2,500 dealer bonus and the blinds start at 25/50 with 45 minute levels. It has quite a good structure and allows 1 re-entry per person for the first 6 levels, it has a guaranteed prizepool of £25,000 and I was expecting around 70 – 80 entrants.

We are in the first level of the tournament having played for about 30 minutes, I am down slightly on my starting stack at around 26k and haven’t yet showdown a hand. In the hand in question UTG opens to 800 (16bb) from a stack of 21.5k and gets two callers from middle position, and it folds to me in the big blind and I look down at AQo. I have played with this villain before and he is very loose and is often busted within the first couple of levels and immediately re-enters, he is quite happy to bluff and gamble and although he is UTG here he doesn’t have to have a big hand. He also varies his raise sizes frequently, generally weaker and monster hands he would be raising slightly less (400-600) and so I was fairly confident that I could narrow his range down and gave him a range of approximately the following QQ-77,ATs+,KQs,AJo+,KQo, I think AA and KK are unlikely here due to the sizing. Against this range I am about 51% so it looks like a good spot to squeeze, however we are 430bb deep and I have also seen the villain get it in with pretty much all of his opening range here so I cannot rely on any fold equity and this also means I am reluctant to 3 bet then fold to this opponent. 

So this spot is basically a question of whether I want to flip or not, if I do then I can raise to around 3k with the intention of getting it in against him although I would have to re-evaluate if one of the other players raises back, if I am just called preflop I will have to re-evaluate but I think this is an unlikely case. If I do not want to get it in here then I can either call out of position or even just fold, even though this seems quite tight the guy will barrel a lot of the time and my life will be difficult out of position 4 way. So I quickly weighed up the pros and cons of 3 betting to get it in here, these are what I saw the cons to be:

1)We are very deep and flipping is high variance

2) I have very little fold equity to add to the EV from flipping

3) It is possible one of the other two players is trapping

4) I might only get calls which will mean I am playing a bloated pot out of position against a loose opponent

5) Doubling my stack is less than twice as good as keeping my stack

  

And the pros:

1) The villain is on my immediate left and is very aggressive making it harder for me to win chips without a decent hand while he is there

2) The structure is good and even if I lose I will have 90bb left to try and work with or gamble

3) It is a re-entry tournament, which increases the chances he will get in when I have him dominated, it also means I can re-enter if I lose and then bust my remaining chips

4) There is 1,600 of likely dead chips in the middle

5) Getting a big stack would allow me to be more aggressive in subsequent hands

6) The villain is likely to gamble off his chips in another hand and this is a chance for me to get them before someone else does

This last point links quite nicely to my previous blog about edge, in particular how our edge changes as the dynamics change and how our edge isn’t as big as it may appear if there are other good players at the table fighting for those chips. Point 6 definitely has a lot of weight here as there were other good players at the table who I didn’t want to get his chips as they would make my life even harder, add this to the fact that my edge over this player is reduced due to me being directly out of position and this edge is going to diminish as the blinds increase. If I had had position on this player then I would have been much more likely to call and assess on the flop.

Taking all this into account within a few seconds I decided to raise to 3k, UTG shoved and the other players folded, I called and flipped my AQ to find he had pocket 8s, I had got 430bb effective in preflop with AQo which may seem crazy but I was happy with it in this spot. Alas, I didn’t catch and ended up down to 4.5k, but after grinding this stack for a while I got back to the starting stack and eventually got well above average when I got it all in with AcAh on 2s4c5h 4h board v Kh3h and my aces held (They do hold sometimes!). I eventually busted on the last level of day 1 after triple barrel bluffing a K high board and getting called down by KQ, this left me around 20bb and soon after I got AK and flatted an UTG open the flop came KQ3 and I called his bet then he checked the brick turn and called my bet, the Ace on the river gave me top two and he put me all in, I called to find he had JT and rivered the stone cold nuts, I had slowplayed preflop and on the flop to try and get value and I did get value but in doing so I ran the risk of him hitting which he did on this occasion. Given my recent run in live games I can’t complain about some misfortune!

In summary, although generally we want to avoid flips when very deep in tournaments, we shouldn’t always shy away from them if there are stronger reasons for flipping than against, it will always hurt to lose big flip early on in a MTT and it increases variance but in the right spots it can increase your $EV, particularly if you can use the big stack well.