Winning Your Share of Coin Flips

I read somewhere once that, in order to make it to the final table of a NLHE tournament, you usually have to win more than your share of coin flip situations. Last night at Above Malibu's weekly $10 tourney, I went 1 for 3 in coin flips and still managed to get a piece of a 4-way chop.

The first coin flip was during the middle stages of the tournament. There was a minimum raise UTG and it folded to me in LP with pocket 9s. I decided to put the UTG player to the test and pushed. I had him only slightly stacked. He called with ATs and my 9s stood up.

Later on, I found pocket 7s in LP and raised to 3xBB. The BB pushed for just slightly less than double what I had out there. I called. He had AQ and spiked his ace on the river. It didn't hurt me that badly, knocking me back down to average stack land, but I wasn't happy. That was the pot that would have carried me for the rest of the tourney if I had won the hand.

Then, just before we collapsed to the final table, I was in the BB with pocket 9s again. UTG moved all-in for about 3500. He was called by a player who will call with any face and who had only another 300 or 400 behind. I had 3500 behind my blind. Faced with the probability that I had to beat three overs and that I might already be crushed by the UTG player, I mucked my 9s face up. They opened A-Q (UTG) and K-8. The flop, of course, was 9-high. I let out a long sigh.

That was ok, though. At the final table, with a stack of about 4200, blinds 600/1200/100, I got the big stack to double me up when he min-raised UTG and I pushed A-T. He called with Q-T and my ace played. Then came the hand that very nearly pushed me over the edge.

I had 10,500. At that point 8 players of the original 28 remained, with 5 getting paid. A short stack of about 2500 moved in from UTG. It folded to me in the CO, with AKs. There were three players to act behind me, one of whom -- the BB -- was a short stack himself. I pushed to isolate. The button hemed and hawed before pushing his stack of about 5800 into the pot. I didn't like that at all. The blinds got out of the way and we all opened our hands:

J8o (UTG)
AKs (me)
J-J (button)

It was a coinflip! Crap. At that stage of the tourney, I didn't want to be racing half my stack on a coinflip. I dealt out a flop of K-Q-x, making me much happier. I was looking good to knock out two players and build a big stack. The turn was an ace to give me two pair. As I burned and turned the last card, I said "no ten, no ten!" and -- of course! -- a ten came on the river. I lost BOTH pots to a five-outer on the river. Cruel, cruel fate. Rivered by a slim draw for the second time of the night.

That second loss hurt worse, especially since the blinds subsequently went up to 1000/2000/200. With 4900 left in my stack, UTG raised to 6000. This was the guy that I beat with AT v. QT. I saw KK and pushed. Everyone folded, and he opened QQ. My cowboys held up.

We were down to four players by the time the blinds went up again, to 1500/3000/300. Amazingly, nobody busted during that entire level. At the end of the level, I asked for a chip count. The counts were: 11,600 (me), 12,400, 15,600 and 16,400. The next blind level was 2500/5000/500. That meant, essentially, that two of us had 2.5 BBs, one had 3 BBs and one had 3.5 BBs, and that the difference between the chip leader and fourth place was a mere 1 BB. I proposed that we find some way to do a 4-way chop. One player, who had just lost a small chunk of his stack on the previous hand, resisted at first, but quickly saw the logic of what I was proposing. With everybody having 3 BBs or less, the tournament was a total crapshoot at that point. We finally settled on a 70/70/60/60 chop of the $260 prize money (5th place got $20).

The chop was an anti-climactic way to end a tourney that had raged on for 3.5 hours, but given that I only won 1 out of 3 coin flips, I was happy with my $60.