Texas Hold Em Tournament Strategy – Avoid Coin-Flip Hands

A good Texas Hold Em Tournament Strategy will stress the important of avoiding coin-flip hands but this point is even more important early on in the tournament. Later in the game, at the money tables or last table sometimes you are required to take the punt but a lot of players generally have difficulty getting this far in the tournament. Avoiding coin-flip hands early on can be a critical factor in ensuring you stay alive long enough to take home some cash.

Early in the tournament, do not play coin-flip hands for all your money. Incase you do not know, a coin-flip hand is a hand where the odds depict you and your partner both have a fairly even chance of winning. So its about 50-50, the odds of flipping a coin and guessing heads or tails. A classic example of this is when one play has two overcards, like KQ and the other player has an under paid, like JJ. So with these hands both players have essentially about the same chance to win. In this example if you had the pair of jacks you are favored to win but its not by much. I certainly would not want my future in the tournament falling in the hands of odds like this. The major issue with situations like this, in tournaments, is that if you lose you've lost. You're out of the tournament and you can not get back in. This is the largest thing you want to avoid.

If you win a coin-flip hand then you get to double up - that is you get all the other people chips and double your stack in one hand. This is a great benefit to your underlining Texas Hold Em Tournament Strategy because having more chips means you have more power and a better chance of winning. However, the effect of losing the coin-flip hand, again, you losing and being out of the tournament, is a risk that I would not want to be taking, no matter how juicy the reward. The thing is, doubling up early on in a tournament does not really mean that much, there is still a long way way to go before your at the end. Doubling up later in the tournament is hugely advantageous.

So, if whatever Texas Hold Em Tournament Strategy you have is ever going to work, you need to actually be in the tournament to implement it. Playing coin-flip hands could jeopardize you existence in the tournaments and this is why I refrain from playing them early on. Although the benefits of winning one can be doubling up your chips this still is not worth the risk in my books. The next time your in a poker tournament think twice before you go through with a coin-flip hand. You just might find that the coin does not land on your side.

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Source by Alex Bannon