Low PP 3-handed

[sofere]

10-person tourney, in the money. I've been playing always push small PP in these situations and either take the small pot or go to a likely coinflip where I have slight advantage. I was just wondering if anyone thought it would be better to raise 3-4xBB then push the flop if no Ace or King?
Note: Table has been pretty tight. Most pots won preflop, hardly ever went to the turn.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t200 (3 handed)

Button (t4825)
SB (t5040)
Hero (t3635)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 6/images/graemlins/spade.gif, 6/images/graemlins/heart.gif.
Button calls t200, SB folds, Hero?

[Unarmed]

I think a 3xBB raise is the best choice here, unless Button is good enough to read your raise for what it is. If he's a typical low limit SNG player he'll come over the top of you all-in with a monster, and if he's limping with crap (likely scenario) he'll probably drop the hand.

If you get called I push any flop with no A. If I don't put in that PF raise though I really can't assume the limper isn't on absolute garbage, and hence cannot push a QJx flop with any real level of confidence.

You didn't mention the buy-in here, which is pretty important.

[sofere]

This one in particular was a cheapo tourney...5.50 buyin, but I'm curious about this play in general for each buy-in level

[Irieguy]

If you are not playing push/fold poker once you're in the money in a SNG, you are likely to be making too many mistakes. That's not to say that it's ALWAYS correct to either push or fold... but if you play that way you are much less likely to hurt yourself.

If you simply push every single time you can be the first one to do so down to 3 players, you will be playing pretty close to optimal short-handed/large-blind poker. It won't be optimal, but it will be close and much better than what most of your opponents are doing.

Whenever you raise less than all-in during this stage, you are giving your opponents some folding equity. It's very difficult to give your opponents folding equity with large blinds, short-handed and not be making a mistake.

Again, there a plenty of exceptions... but your default mode for shorthanded play should be push/fold,

Irieguy