Live tourney hand. 99 in the BB.

[ImMrFish]

$50+5 live tourney. ~80 players start. 7 places pay. 7th pays $100, first is around $1400. Top heavy payout.

Blinds are 600/1200, and I havee about 17k left after paying my blind. With two tables and 18 players left I find 99 in the BB. Cutoff, who is a weak but agressive player with a big stack raises to 4k. Button, the other big stack, who is solid but overconfident, reraises to 15k. Small blind folds.

BB Pushes or folds?

[mcatdog]

What's the average stack size? I think you can let this go unless you've seen the button coming over the top a lot.

[ImMrFish]

Average stack sice was ~40K at this point. He had come over the same player on the last orbit too, and he was holding rockets.

[ImMrFish]

Okay, here's what happened. Blind were going up in a few minutes, and I figured I needed this pot to make the final table, so I was willing to gamble it up a little (I was going home either way, most likely).

I pushed. Cutoff fold. Button called and showed KK. Flop came 7 8 10 rainbow. Turn J. River Rag. Dumb luck for me, and the implied tilt odds against the villain were huge. I was able to take the rest of his (still considerable stack) in the next couple of hands I played.

[drmcboy]

your reads "weak but aggressive" and "solid but overconfident" seem intentionally crafted to make it seem like pushing is a good idea. Making a play based on a read is fine. Posting a hand and wanting us to use the read is tough to do. If you had the read that button had crap, and CO would lay down, the play is good, end of story.

You have no fold equity on button, so you're assuming he can make this play with AT+, 22+ in addition to the hands he can clearly make it with that own 99. It's a reasonable assumption. You have a great price to take a flip here. If you assume CO almost always folds, the question is just how often you think you're flipping, dominated, dominating. Here I'd say 50/35/15 are reasonable, and with the overlay it's an OK play.

having said all that, I would fold here. You have plenty of fold equity left in your stack and time still to steal.

You also don't mention how big the big stacks are which makes this tough.

[ImMrFish]

Thanks for the feedback drmc. Weak but agressive was an honest read. The guy liked to bukly with his stack, and wasn't afraid to get his money in with the worst of it. Ie reraising a shortstack all in with JTo. The 'overconfident' guy was good, but had been been running his mouth the whole game. A lot of its table talk, but he does run a local after card room, and felt he could outplay the majority of players at this tourney (and probably could).

CO had about 55k chips after taking the worst of it from buttons rockets, and I figured he would lay down. Button had right around 60k, and there was no way he could fold to my bet, so and I was working on about the same percentages you gave.

Anyway, looking back, I wasn't too happy with my play even though it gave me the tourney. Thanks again for the input.

[Dunk]

This is an interesting one for me, particularly since you note that the blinds are due to increase. Right now your M is about 10, which seems to be the point where people start advocating a bit more reckless agression (like the push here). If the blinds are about to go up to 750/1500, with M dropping to 7.5 ...

So the big question is at what point do you need to start accepting coinflips? I'm sure the answer is "it depends", primarily on the tightness of the table, and with the bubble approaching its only going to get tighter.