Late hand in Stars $11+R

[yoadrians]

There are 25 people remaining out of 1,100 plus, and average stack is about $275k. Blinds, 20K-40K are eating me alive, and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to fold into the next pay scale (18th-10th) with the second-to-lowest chip stack in the tournament at 156K. I'm thinking I need to double up ... and fast.

Here's the hand from memory:

Hero is dealt: Ah 9h

Villain (355K):UTG, mini-raises to 80K
5 folds
Hero (156K):Button, ????

Basically, I'm wondering if this would be a good time to push, or if I should wait for a better spot.

Thanks in advance.

[yoadrians]

Bump.

Just figured that someone might have a thought on this situation. I mean, eventually, I am going to have to push because my chip stack is dwindling compared to the blinds. Is this a hand I push with? If not, why? What hands am I looking for?

For what it's worth, no reads at the table. I had just been moved to table and my only read was that everyone seemed to have more chips than me /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Wu36]

There were a couple people limping/minraising in EP with Ax/Kxs. But minraises scare me unreasonably, so against a reasonable player I'd probably fold. This is all assuming you had 156 after posting, if not I don't think you have enough FE on future hands to not push this. Hopefully someone better than myself will chime in here, these UTG minraises always bothered me.

[tiger7210]

personally with no FE and no reads I would wait to try and push steal with junk that at least may be live than have him call where I may be drawing to 3 outs. If his raise was from late position that decision may change but the only hand I may be ahead of here is KQ or a loose player raising with a smaller Ax from UTG on a steal.

[nolanfan34]

[ QUOTE ]
personally with no FE and no reads I would wait to try and push steal with junk that at least may be live than have him call where I may be drawing to 3 outs. If his raise was from late position that decision may change but the only hand I may be ahead of here is KQ or a loose player raising with a smaller Ax from UTG on a steal.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with this. You don't have any folding equity really, and the min-raise seems unlikely to be a hand that you're ahead of. I'd hate folding there, but it's probably a good play.

[yoadrians]

Well, thank you for the advice. You've all confirmed my suspicions - that my push was ideally a poor play, due to no reads at the table and a mini-raise that screams 'I WANT ACTION!'.

For what it's worth, I pushed and villain called my A9s with A7s ... and then went on to make a straight and bust me 25th. I wasn't mad about it last night - just went to bed thinking 'at least I got my money in when I was a favorite', blah blah blah. But when I woke up this morning, I was mad at myself for my 'results-oriented' line of thinking.

As much as it hurts, I'll probably lay that down next time around.

Thanks again for the advice.