A friend of mine played a $6 Turbo, double stack Knock Out bounty 90-person sit and go poker tournament on Full Tilt. All of these adjectives are a bit distracting. The fact that the casino online tournament was double stack is basically moot due to its turbo blind structure. In turbo tournaments, since the blinds go up quickly, there is less time to wait around and usually more people willing to take gambles or get it in with coinflips. The double-stack gives the players more play in the beginning, but at the end, the blinds pretty much dictate an all-in or fold game, even though there are a lot of chips in play.
My friend basically made his buy-in back through knock-out bounties. By knocking out five or so players throughout the course of the tournament (at $1 apiece) he was essentially freerolling. 10% of the field payed out traditionally, so you had to get to the final table to beat the bubble.
My friend got there with about 42k (about 25 BB’s), making him about even with most of the bigger stacks at the online poker table, but still not very deep. Then, the blinds were 800/1600 with an ante that I’m not positive of (probably 200). In early position he had been dealt pocket 10s. An earlier player raised to 4800 and he flat-called directly after him. A player in late position then pushed all-in for about 40k. The opening raiser folded and my friend with the 10s thought about it. He would have had plenty of chips to fold and try and get a better spot to move his money in, maybe even against a shorter stack. But he had a read on the player from watching him for a while at another table that he was likely to do this without a pair.
His decision was basically, do I want to try and gamble, hopefully get my money in as a coinflip here, and become the chip leader at the final table? If he won he would almost surely guarantee being paid out in the top 3, and if he lost, he would e crippled and most likely be out in 8th place for $13. He decided to call. His opponent had AK. He lost the race and eventually busted in 8th place. If he had folded, he might have caught good cards in a better position. Calling all your money is never a great scenario, but pushing all in can always elicit a fold, and with blinds and antes, this can be not only sustaining, but often times profitable. Maybe he could have held out a little longer.
