Final Table, Short stack - Go for it or try let others be knocked out?

AdMMM

Tonight I was playing in my favoured tournament, a $1500 GTD with a $3 buyin, unlimited rebuys within first hour, an optional addon at the first break and with a field of ~80. I was chipleader for the greater half of the tournament but made a few bad calls leading up to the bubble and on the bubble found myself in 4th position with 55,000 chips (~10% of total chips in play). Two shortstacked players went all-in and I called with my pocket tens but lost to a rivered flush. This meant that I was relatively shortstacked on the final table.

I was 7th in chips with 28,000 but the blinds were 5k/10k and when play started at the final table I found myself UTG+1. I folded my first hand, a hand that resulted in a player being knocked out, but decided to push all-in with Ts7s UTG while I still had the ability to push people off hands. I figured that if I could pick up the blinds here, I would be able to survive another orbit, giving me a chance to pick up some playable hands or result in the other shortstack being eliminated.

I believe that the lowest stack had 17k chips and was sitting two seats to my left. If I had not made my move and not been a dealt a good hand in the blinds then I would have been left with 13k and absolutely zero ability scare people away. I want to know was I right to make a move?, was I right to think I could scare the table away (bearing in mind that I've observed half of them to have been very tight-passive pre-bubble)?, was my play too transparent? or should I have left the blinds engulf me in the hopes of the smaller stack being eliminated?

They payout scale was something along the lines of:

10th: 30
9th: 45
8th: 60
7th: 75
6th: 100
5th: 120
4th: 150
3rd: 200
2nd: 300
1st: 450

The Average stack is 61000 but only 3 players are above that as the chip leader has around 130k chips. Any double up would put me back in contention.

Van Dice

Dunno much about donkaments, but I would always prefer to go for first place. What I do know is that a short-stacked shove UTG looks like a total bluff, so I would rather make a move before then.

Rb

Can't be a crapshoot without the crap


With 3 BBs I'm pushing just about anything here, or possibly folding and pushing whatever UTG brings next hand.

ozpoker

First off, with 2.5 BBs, you have no folding equity. The time to be a threat has come and gone.

With a micro stack (3BB or less), I know lots of people say to push with just about anything as the blinds approach. I'm a bit of a contrarian though; while I don't have the mathematical analysis to back it up (have to do that sometime ), I think it's better to play a random hand in the BB rather than jam with even a semi-strong hand like Ax or 33.

My reason is that when you play a hand UTG (or in EP), you have to go through the entire field, often gathering multiple callers that will try to knock you out. Then, even if you double up, you're likely going to have to play in your BB also, since you will often have the pot odds to call a raise. But if you wait until you are in the BB to play a random hand, you have 2 things going for you: 1) the rest of the table has to play poker", since no one's sure what the big stacks are going to do, and 2) on those occasions that you win, you will be able to afford to fold your SB and have an additional orbit to find another situation to jam.

Note that none of this has anything to do with climbing the payout ladder one notch. If you happen to do so by folding UTG, fine, but this strategy is about taking your best shot at increasing your stack and getting deeper. Also note that I'm not advocating folding a strong hand in this position: I'd be happy to get my chips in with AQ or 88 here.

-Oz-

RoundTower

I think this hand is weak enough that you should wait for the BB instead, unless the table is really tight and you think even the BB would fold.

I think I would push most queens here but not T high.