Hand #1 from live $300 Freezeout [Mad Marty Wilson bash at CinCins]

[Suited_Jock]

Live tournament $300 buyin started with 10k in chips hero has 14,000.

Blinds are 400-800 with no ante. 30 minute clock.

UTG (Scottish Dave) is beginning to need help  he's nursed a short stack since the beginning of the last level and shoves in his last 4,700 chips (He has pushed perhaps 5 or 6 times and I believe has been uncontested.) it folds quickly round to yourself on the small blind and you look down to see:

 

I put villain on a range of Ax Kx or a small to medium pocket pair. I don't feel I am dominated at this stage and fancy taking a bit of a gamble for some extra chips to play with thus I call.

The BB asks how much I have left and goes into an oscar winning "pfftt hmmm" and moves allin. He has you covered by 3k at rougly 17k.

2 questions #1 preflop call is ok?

#2 uhm call or fold i guess.

[BigTomatoes]

 correct call against the short stack

 but a fold to the re - raise for me

 you have to put him on an overpair or AK so your really gambling for all your chips and thats without putting dave on a hand, if dave does have a hand ( a big pair etc )  youd be pretty much out of the tournament on this hand i think.

 how did it go anyway?

[Ironside]

if you think your ahead of the shorty then push all in to isolate  but with 20k and the blinds only at 400/800 i would have passed you have plenty of time to play uncontested pots no need to try and take out the shorties let others take the pain while you sit back waiting for a real hand that you might be dominating with

[rivered]

yep ditto, the first call is fine, and I'd probably fold the re-raise.  The only hope you've got is that they both have Ax, but I don't think you're in too bad a shape with 9.5k left - depends how you feel against the remaining field - clock is a bit quick and blinds are getting big so things could catch up with you if you don't have an edge on the field.  Tricky but lay down is right move unless you think you're gonna be outplayed later down the line.

[TillerMaN]

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.

[Highstack]

Take the coinflip here against the villain, but don't ever call with 55 and someone still to act and those chipstacks.

Put yourself in the position of the bb. He has seen you smooth call the raise and he might put the villain on a reasonable ace. He has you covered and he holds two rags that he is sure are not dominated. He has 800 invested and its 3900 to call assuming that he is probably a 60/40 dog to the villain. He knows he can squezze you off most hands by pushing here and that you can't call his all in without a monster. He can now freely pump all in and get 10200 for his 3900 @ 60/40 against. You need to take this move away from him and to do this you must push all in first to isolate. Bb will now likely pass a whole range of hands that may have you beat (like 66-99) or races like AQ AJ that he might have also tried to squeeze you out. Get em in first on your terms. If you lose 4k, you have not done any great damage, but you don't want to go out on 55.