Well I have to say, this thread has definately changed my mind on the matter. I immediately thought that folding was unassailably the correct asnwer, now I believe that, except for maybe the top 1% of players, this is an automatic call. Great discussion in this thread!

Can we start a thread on how important it is for national securty that semaj550 sends me $1000 within the next 4 days?

Sorry, nothing you could say would convince me to give money for the killing of innocent people.

Great, you've turned a humorous quip into a humorless debate.

True, "national security" is a big joke.

So, it seems the consensus is...
If you think you are a better poker player than most of the other players in the field (what 80%?) then you fold.

If you think you are "just average" or "somewhat above average but still not god-like", then you call.

Seems to follow a recent Daniel article about long ball vs. short ball play. If you are truely a great player, then you should try to play short-ball. See lots of cheap flops and then try to out-play post-flop. If you are anything less than dominant skill level at the table, then try to get all your chips into the pot whenever you have a mathematical advantage.
Sound about right?

If you are truley better than 80% of players in the field, then you would know that this is an insta-call. It doesn't matter if Ivey and Juanda are at your table or not, no one is good enough to pass up on this kind of edge. You reference Daniel saying to play "small ball" and get your chips into the pot when you have a mathematical advantage. Here you have a huge mathematical advtange. Furthermore, it's a lot easier to push people around with a "small ball" style if you have them covered. By not calling here, you are giving away 2,000 chips in EV. No one is good enough to give up this big of an advantage in the early stage of a tournament.

This is such an easy and obvious fold. I wouldn't make this call if I knew the first 4 board cards were 2479 with no hearts. It's risk vs. reward.

Here's the big key that I think everyone is overlooking. You have the guy on your right exposing his cards to you! Me, I would never want him to leave, stay forever. I'll maybe take him down when I have KK to his K8o and the case king flops. Otherwise I want to see his cards everytime. That is the +EV big time, use that info to take down Gus and Phil.

When is Daniel going to post the answer to this quiz?

The answer is call. Do you actually need KidPoker himself to say it?

The answer is call. Do you actually need KidPoker himself to say it?

The advantage here is not huge .

Yes it is...your chances are 50% greater than your opponent's.

and only about 20% better than the odds given in a coinflip! I would want better odds than that.

How about if we defer to Doyle and Phil for what they would do early in the WSOP main event, from SS 2:

Be disciplined and be ready to lay down marginal hands. I once saw Phil Hellmuth, who has had great success in no-limit hold’em tournaments, lay down a Kh Jh to a Qh 10h 2c flop. He had raised the pot, bet at it on the flop, and got raised all his chips. It was early in the tournament and Phil passed, even though he had a draw at an open-ended straight flush. This is something that would never happen in a cash game. I’m not sure I would have passed, but it was probably correct to do so, given that Phil expected to have even bigger advantages later. Needless to say, my opinion of Phil’s no-limit tournament play went up several points after that hand.

and only about 20% better than the odds given in a coinflip! I would want better odds than that.

How about if we defer to Doyle and Phil for what they would do early in the WSOP main event, from SS 2:

Be disciplined and be ready to lay down marginal hands. I once saw Phil Hellmuth, who has had great success in no-limit hold’em tournaments, lay down a Kh Jh to a Qh 10h 2c flop. He had raised the pot, bet at it on the flop, and got raised all his chips. It was early in the tournament and Phil passed, even though he had a draw at an open-ended straight flush. This is something that would never happen in a cash game. I’m not sure I would have passed, but it was probably correct to do so, given that Phil expected to have even bigger advantages later. Needless to say, my opinion of Phil’s no-limit tournament play went up several points after that hand.

If you don't know the fundamental difference between this situation and being a 60/40 favourite I suggest you leave poker now and go back to driving a truck...or try knitting as a hobby instead.

To Flip or Not to Flip
Analysis of an all-in 'coin-flip' situation early in a tournament
It's the first day of a five-figure buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament. You've gotten a good night's sleep. You feel alert.

You wade through all the railbirds and all the media and finally locate your seat. Just as you do, the tournament director announces, "Shuffle up and deal!" It's your big blind, and you toss two of your green chips onto the felt. You've now got $9,950 in chips in your stack. Everyone folds around to the small blind, who shoves all in for $10,000. You haven't even taken your chip protector out of your pocket yet, but you figure you probably won't need it on this hand. You're going to fold, unless you look down at aces. But there's a problem. The small blind doesn't have a protector on his cards, either, and when he looks down at them one more time, he accidentally exposes his hand. He has the A K. You look down at your hand, and find two black queens. You've done your research. You know you have a 53.8 percent chance of winning if you call. But should you?

This is a classic hypothetical question, and it creates raging arguments almost every time it's discussed. I believe there is a right answer to this question, one that doesn't depend on how skillful the player is, or what the player is hoping to get from the tournament. I hope by the end of this column that I will have convinced you.

First, let's look at the common arguments I hear for folding:

(1) If you're a good player, you want to use your skill to find a better spot to get your chips in.

(2) You don't want to risk your entire tournament on one hand, especially in a coin-flip situation.

(3) I don't play these big buy-in tournaments very often, so I want to get some experience playing them.

In case you haven't guessed, I strongly believe all of these arguments are specious. Here's a quick thought experiment: Let's say you're playing in a tournament with 1,024 people. How do you win this tournament? By getting all the chips, of course! This means that if you calculate your chances of doubling up 10 times, you will calculate your chances of winning the event. Now let's say that you have a 53.8 percent chance of doubling up whenever you get all in for your stack. This means that your chance of winning the tournament is .538 to the 10th power, or about 0.203 percent. The average player's chance of winning the tournament is 1÷1,024, or about 0.098 percent. So, if you consistently get your chips in with a 53.8 percent chance of winning, you will be more than twice as likely as an average player to win the event. It gets better.

Let's say you choose to fold the queens, thinking you have a better than 53.8 percent chance to double up in this event. If you decline the "coin flip," you're stuck with your initial starting stack, as you're expecting to have a better than 53.8 percent chance of doubling up at some point later in the tournament. If you accept, and win, the coin toss, you double up immediately.

You need to estimate, then, the expected value (EV) of your brand-new $20,000 stack size at a later point in the tournament - the hypothetical point at which you'd eventually double up after declining the "coin flip." Let's reasonably (conservatively, actually) say that when you double up right away, your stack will be worth $22,000 at that hypothetical future point at which you would've found your better spot.

It's time to do the math. If taking the "coin flip" gives you a 53.8 percent chance to have a stack of $22,000 later in the tournament, how likely do you have to be to double up later in order to fold your pocket queens? Well, you can answer that by solving this equation: x(20,000) = (.538)(22,000).

Do the algebra and you get x = .5918, or 59.18 percent. So, do you think you're good enough to have a 59.18 percent chance of doubling up later on? If you said yes, you're wrong. Go back to our thought experiment. If you could consistently have a 59.18 percent chance of doubling up, you'd win a 1,024-player tournament more than five times as often as an average player. Trust me, you're not that good. I don't think it's possible to be that good. I'm certainly not that good.

Here's one more way to look at it: Let's say you're a very good player. You win a no-limit hold'em tournament twice as often as an average player - which is a spectacular rate. You win the 1,024-player tournament one time in 512. Now we can work backward and figure out our chance of doubling up. We do this by solving the equation 1÷512 = (chance of doubling up) to the 10th power.

And we get the chance of doubling up, .536, or 53.6 percent (note that this is smaller than the chance of your two queens beating the A-K suited).

Using the same equation as above, it turns out that we would take any edge greater than 48.63 percent. Yes, that's right. I just made the argument that very good players should actually take slightly negative EV situations early in a tournament, because if they win the hand, they get to use their skill with their new stack. And that's more important than waiting around for a slightly better situation - much more important. Have you seen a lot of successful players using the "get chips or go broke" strategy early? This is part of the reason why.

Some say calling with the queens would amount to a good player letting his skill go to waste. Here's the thing about poker - the skill is about finding edges. And edges are precious. Think about it; on most hands, we fold before the flop. It's very hard to find a way to get our chips in profitably. And here, we have a known edge. We know that in the long run, we'll earn $810 by calling with the Q-Q. That's not a small edge. Folding here would be akin to flushing an hour's work down the toilet. Calling here doesn't negate our skill over the field. Calling here is our skill over the field.

You don't want to risk your whole tournament on one hand? Then you shouldn't be in the tournament. The only question you should be asking yourself is, "Will I make more money in the long run by calling here?" And even if it's "the experience" you're after, wouldn't the experience of a final-table run be much more valuable than the experience of playing for a day or so and then busting out near the bubble?

If you don't believe all of this math mumbo jumbo, I suggest a little record-keeping experiment. For every tournament you play, write down whether you double your stack or bust out before doing so. I did this for a little while, and I doubled up 67 times in 127 tournaments. That's about 52.8 percent of the time. I think that's pretty good! If, after a thousand tournaments, you find that you're doubling up more than 59 percent of the time or so, congratulations - you might be good enough to fold queens in the above situation. In the meantime, stick to getting your chips in with an edge. That's how poker tournaments are won in real life.

Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, which is available at www.CardPlayer.com. He is grateful to Dr. Bill Chen for first presenting the above argument as The Theory of Doubling Up.

Yes it is...your chances are 50% greater than your opponent's.

Please enlighten me. What's the difference (besides several percentage points)?

Here we are about two hours later. If you're going to imply that there's a difference, but you fail to provide one, maybe you should keep your job cleaning the Slurpee machine.

Early in a tournament, the situations are similar in their risks and results.

If PH looked over and saw his opponent had AsQs (making PH 58% to win) he'd have called in his famous all-in call manner...but he didn't know that (and was probably certain his opponent wasn't doing this with tptk)...against a reasonable range of hands he knew he was a 60/40 dog, so he correctly folded (where he'd never fold this in a cash game as the pot odds warrant a call here).

Because the difference between 60/40 and 50/50 is HUGE.

I disagree.

Thanks for taking the time to submit all of the details in your last post.

Nice work. Nothing like someone else trying to *prove* that your opinion is wrong...

I asked for more info and he delivered more info.

my apologies for not reading pgs 7 and 8 of the posts

I would call.

But has anyone mentioned or thought that you now might be a target of Gus and Ivey?

I know I am not a world class player, but I also know that I want to be in as many hands as I can with a player who puts all their chips in with an unmade (that a word?) hand. So if I am phil or gus and I see you lay up your AK on the first hand of any tourney I am going to try to play lots of pots with you. I would be salivating.

In other words, you could be a target because of your big stack and your play. This might not be the desired results of doubling up that you expected.

I call.

It's the first hand of the Main Event, and EVERYONE goes all in (I think it's 9 people per table, so that's 8 all-ins) before you, and you are in the BB... You look down and see AA... Do u call??

Ok, this one pops up every couple of weeks. I call in an instant. What is your answer?

I fold in an instant.... the odds of ONE pair holding up against 8 other hands are extremely slim. Easy fold.

Lol. POTD.

Read THIS. Then you might understand.

Do you risk your whole tournament on a 16% shot?

After wiping the drool from my face, yes

75-80% of people who play poker lose money - FACT.

If you believe that it's only 80%....

I might understand? lol... ok

Um..... the link you sent has a situation where one person has raised 4x the BB, and another person has pushed all in..... that is NOTHING like what I asked. That is an easy situation where you can re-raise all in yourself. That is easy.

My situation was if ALL 8 players on the very first hand had gone all in, in front of you.

Think about it, and I mean try to actually think about it.. You have paid your $10,000 to the cashier the week before... you are now sitting at the first table of the Main Event of the WSOP... lo and behold, you appear to have drawn the most ridiculous table in poker history. EVERYONE goes all in!

If you call, your chances of AA holding up will be no greater than 16%.. possibly a little less. (Even though, granted, it will be the best hand pre-flop).

Do you risk your whole tournament on a 16% shot? My answer would be no. These people are all clearly lunatics and you will be able to build your stack slower, through them, rather than risk it all in a 9-handed crap shoot.

If you post more links, at least make sure they are even close to what I asked... then you might understand, ok?

Edit - Actually AA will NOT always be the best hand 9 handed... It is actually quite hard for it to be, if you play around with a NL Holdem odds calculator.

In this case, attached, the 23 suited has a better chance of winning. AA is only 14.7%. You can see for yourself that, 9 handed, AA will not be the best hand. And it rarely will be, with 9 random hands.

As I said, easy fold. Especially as you have already gained the information that they are complete nutters and you will take their chips, in a better spot, later in the game.
75-80% of people who play poker lose money - FACT.

I can tell from those 8 words that you are one of them.

If you believe that it's only 80%....

I will be stunned, truly STUNNED, if Daniel's answer to this is call.

Pros like TJ Cloutier, Paul Phillips and Mike Matros (off the top of my head) are all on record that they would call here.

I know this is a hypothetical question... but it's just too far fetched. It would just NEVER happen. The blinds at the first level of the ME are 25/50...

Someone happens to go all in first hand from the small blind, and you happen to see their cards??

I would fold within 2 seconds... (one second if I had bought in for the whole $10,000 myself, and not qualified through a satallite)

If he really is doing that, then he is obviously drunk or mentally unstable. With him on your right, you would be able to double up within the hour, in a situation where he is almost drawing dead anyway, not just a 3/2 advantage.

wrong, at least use the real names of the players. His name is MATT Matros. You really should stop calling him Mike.