[mvdgaag]

It depends a lot on the risk to take. I'm not passing a 50.1 to 49.9 edge in the first hand of a tournament if it's about a small pot compared to my stack size. But I won't call a preflop allin move with a small pocket pair if I KNEW he had two overcards. At least not in the early stages of the tournament. Not because I think I'm a better player than the rest, but because I rather see other players do crazy stuff like that, while I slowly gather chips watching the other players take risks to bust each other out of the tournament. I'm guaranteed to be in the top 30% unless I get very unlucky. All the coinflip players have to be lucky to get there. They are the ones getting me there, because they insist on trying to commit suicide on coinflips all the time.

What I think is an even better strategy is even to fold every hand. You end up in the last 25% of the tournament about anytime, but unfortunately without enough chips to win without huge gambles here.

Of course this last strategy is rediculous. But an in-between strategy is what I think is best. Picking up the pots you can safely pick up and winning the pots where you are a big favorite. Once the blinds are really kicking in I'm playing like I'd play in a cashgame.

Anyways, I think coinflips are like russian roulette. Trying to win 6 coinflips for all your money (which is not very rare) gives you a chance of 1/128 = 0.78% to survive. Of course if you win at first you probably are not risking your tournament life anymore, but still you'd have to be really lucky to advance deep into the tournament.

Like "big pots are for big hands" I think in early stage tournament play it should be "big pots are for big odds". And it rhymes [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

GL