I would like to play at Dusk to Dawn because I am looking for a professionally run poker club that is dedicated to games of skill rather than the Casino environment which is dedicated to games of luck. I will travel from Scotland to play at Dusk Till Dawn.

Iain Girdwood
Professional Poker player
http://www.tillerman.net

The correct move is 100% to move all in. There is no debate =)

The correct move for the Q4 is 100% to fold, again no debate in my opinion.

He was not getting 2-1 pot odds either, he was getting only 1.6-1.

You did leave out how many chips the BB hand. This is kind of crucial information but since you left it out I assume he was just average or normal in which case the above stands. If he was a mega chip leader with only the top 3 out of the remaining 6 getting seats then his call would teeter over into being correct. However, nothing would stop the A9 push being correct here apart from 3 players all having to be all in on the next round with tiny short stacks.

I just want to say that there is a "clear" right answer and that is to fold. There is no decision here, it is really incorrect to call in my opinion.

Even if you give the short stack a hand range of the 50% best starting hands you will still need pot odds of 1.6-1 just to break even on the call but you are only getting 1.4-1 pot odds. So even in this perfect scenario where your opponent is pushing hands like J7o and T6s you will still be losing money on the call. He needs to be pushing with 60%+ of all starting hands to turn this into a slightly profitable call which is HIGHLY unlikely.

It is a mistake to call here with 55 in my opinion although reasonably close. It actually depends on how good your future play of your 14k stack will be if you do decide to pass this 51-52% in your favour coin flip (assuming dave is pushing here with the top 33% of starting hands). When you take into account the small chance the big blind will do exactly what he did to you which will be around 4-5% of the time then it will bring your play down to  precisely a 50% gamble with no edge.

If you pass you will most of the time be able to pick up the 4700 you wanted from Dave over the next few rounds especially if you try and be the one doing the raising (first in vigorish) instead of doing the calling. Remember, most pots are won uncontested to a single raise and with 1600 sitting in the middle you only need to pick up the blinds 3 times to achieve the same result or get 1 caller and bet the flop and most of the time pick it all up and more in a single swoop. Also, with the blinds increasing fast in these tournaments this strategy becomes probably doubly effective when the blinds next go up, probably only minutes away in this tournament.

This sort of calling an all in with a small pocket pair becomes more important as the tournament gets down to the final stages usually right at the final table.

The decision as to wether you call the BB's all in becomes rather complex depending on the range of hands you can put him on. You have around 2.5-1 pot odds on the call here and vs me in the BB you would only have around a 23% chance of scooping the pot, my range being AKs/AKo/AA-77. You might assume you need over 3-1 pot odds to make the call but because of the side pot it is a bit more complex than this but you will certainly need more than 2.5, probably around 2.8. In other words, you will need your opponent in the BB to be able to have in his range of holdings AQo and AQs as well as not having 77-TT(a lot of players would never push all in with these pocket pairs in this situation even though they are more than willing to do it with AQ or AJ).  Even then it will probably only be a break even gamble for you, so you may as well fold even here. If you can include in the BB's range hands like KQ,AJ etc then you will have a clearly profitable call but one in which you will only scoop the full pot less than 1/3 of the time.

The correct play is definitely to call. Your opponents cannot make a mistake easily when you push all in. They will call instantly with 2pairs, sets and flushes all of which you can beat on the turn with very good pot odds to call. You might make the minimum raiser fold a bad ace but I doubt it. I would feel like he is going with this hand 95% after he minimum raises you and would assume I'm behind and take the profitable 5-1(or 6-1 if the other guys comes in with you both) pot odds you will get to hit the nut flush on the turn. With the plan to check fold on the turn if you dont get correct odds(At least 4-1 which you will rarely get) to see the river, in this particular example I think you will get a free check to the river usually. I feel this is the most profitable line of play in this particlar example.

Correct play is either to fold or raise all in. You said there was a good chance Dave had less than you in which case you should have pushed vs him. You can't just call a raise for 1/4 of your chips when you will miss the flop 2/3 of the time.

You would have still been called by JJ here most likely because of the size of tournament and how much people care about a £5 rebuy in Cincins but it is still correct in the long run all assuming that Dave is no rock =)