This coming weekend I'll be in a live LHE tourney, and a live limit Stud tourney. I'll update this blog with regard to those on Monday. Sunday, I'll be visiting mom's since it is Mother's Day after all. Gotta have some type of priority I suppose.

Last night I'm in a 180 man SnG on Stars. These things are flat out easy.

But, I took a bit of advice...or I should say, I let a statement by a player affect my judgement during the tourney.

First, his bit of advice: You're going to have to win some coin flips to get to the FT of any tourney.

Now, how that doesn't apply to what I was playing: I was playing in a 180 man tourney where players will pay you off HUGE when you're ahead. You simply don't have to get in coin flip situations (unless in desperation) if you're ANY type of good in these 180 man tournies on Stars. You just don't. I mean, maybe you're at the final table, and you have an M of 4, and it's down to 5 players, and you push a player with a pair of 9's, and he calls with AK. No prob. I'm just saying that during the tournament, because of the skill level of the players, you have no need to take flips.

How this somewhat bit me during the tourney: This isn't a horrible mistake, in fact, if you do the math it's +EV. Some say to take all +EV situations. And, I agree to some extent...however, if you're better than everyone at the table, COUPLED with the fact that they will pay you off with their entire stack when you have a 70/30 situation, there isn't much need to take a flip even if it is +EV. You'll see what I mean as we go along...

It is the 100/200 w/25 ante level. The table had tightened up considerably, and I actually built my stack to just barely the CL at my table just through blinds and stealing pots on the flop in the 100/200 (no ante) level.

I'm 2nd to act with a pair of 8s. UTG folds. The only person I felt would call any type of raise, or even reraise was a player that was shortstacked on the CO. He had ~1500, and I had ~5300.

I raise to 600, the player in question indeed goes all in, everyone else has folded. There's around 2600 in the pot, and it's 900 to me, so this is a +EV situation for me based on the range I put him on. He calls with a hand in the range I felt he would have, KQo. I lose the hand.

No problem, I have plenty of chips left at around 3400 or so. But, I was pissed. I was pissed that I listened to the guy about the coinflips because of all places, I just did not have to take a coinflip here. If I'm the best player, and if I am going to get paid off when I hit hands, then taking a flip is a bad move. I already have a skill edge against the players at my table, so when I take a flip on an all in pre-flop move, I'm negating my skill edge.

So, what do I do? I prove that I suck, and that I'm a tilting maniac, and I raise UTG w/J6 of diamonds the next hand, the guy that was just in the hand with me reraised me all in, I call, he has AA, I'm down to 120 chips and basically done. So much for emotional control.

I'll be talking with others over the next few days about taking flips in tournies where you are one of the better players playing, and certainly the best at your table. That sounds overconfident, but we don't play poker without confidence do we?

A great post concerning how we should approach poker mentally (from a bird's eye view) is here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=1825403&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&vc=1

The poster, Gigabet, is a very successful online, and live player (understatment).