215 bubble situation

[Fortitude]

UTG is a fairly solid regular who's been doing a fair amount of steal raising. SB's preflop standards are a little lower than UTG's but he's still reasonable.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t150 (4 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

UTG (t4160)
Button (t2710)
SB (t1258)
Hero (t1872)

Preflop: Hero is BB with K/images/graemlins/spade.gif, A/images/graemlins/diamond.gif.
UTG raises to t300, 1 fold, SB pushes all-in for t1258, Hero?

Is this a close one?

[poindexter]

I call and no it’s not close. someone needs to take care of the short stack why not you with a top tier hand. I would put sb on lots of hands including Axo-kq. SB knows that utg is raising too much and he knows that he must make a move to win. The reason I would call and not reraise all-in is because you want to invite utg to play. If you lose to sb heads up then you will very likely take 4th. If utg is also in the pot then sb will have to beat 2 hands to place

[MSUcougar]

[ QUOTE ]
I call and no it’s not close. someone needs to take care of the short stack why not you with a top tier hand. I would put sb on lots of hands including Axo-kq. SB knows that utg is raising too much and he knows that he must make a move to win. The reason I would call and not reraise all-in is because you want to invite utg to play. If you lose to sb heads up then you will very likely take 4th. If utg is also in the pot then sb will have to beat 2 hands to place

[/ QUOTE ]
In my opinion, this advice is terrible. Calling is the worst of 3 options here. You definitely either need to fold here or push all in over the top. A 3 way pot with the chipleader is NOT what you want to play with AK.

[Fortitude]

Yeah, calling is obviously ridiculous. SB is 'the short stack' but he isn't much behind me. If he steals from UTG in this spot, he's ahead of me. I like the push as I'm ahead of SB in chips at the beginning of this hand so if UTG get's involved and wins, I still take 4th. My hand is also better than his or racing the vast, vast majority of the time. Good time to push, no?

[poindexter]

Don’t be so quick to discount the advice you’re getting. The call or reraise argument is probably moot anyway because a good player will be more intimidated by a flat call.

Lets assume UTG is not a good player and he sees your flat call as a sign of weakness. His min raise means one of two things monster or stealing hand. If he has a monster he is going to come over the top regardless of what you do. If he has a stealing hand then I don’t mind having him in the pot. The only hand I don’t want him to have is a pocket pair. His preflop min raise action makes it unlikely he has small or medium pocket pairs. If you call and he decides to call also then you are auto all-in on the flop no matter what. AK will have to lose vs. 2 hands for you to be knocked out of the tournament in 4th place. At the same time SB will have to beat 2 hands for you to finish out of the money. I like my chances with AK here, I am pretty sure I have at least one of them dominated and I believe having utg in the pot will insure your chances of making the money in the long run in this scenario.

[kyro]

4-handed at 75/150? Yeesh.

I probably push in as well. SB has a wide variety of hands, most of which you crush.

[kyro]

Just to point out. I think the difference between calling and reraising all-in is incredibly insignificant. You're not folding to any flop. And I highly doubt UTG is folding to your push if he's going to call after you call, ESPECIALLY if he's a solid regular.

[kamrann]

I agree with you, I think calling is best. There really isn't much of a downside to it relative to pushing.
When you say you are auto-allin on the flop anyway, would you push on the flop if you miss? Of course you're not folding on the flop or at any point, but since you're hoping to get UTG to come along preflop to help beat the short stack, wouldn't it make more sense to allow him to stay in on the flop also? Sure it's highly unlikely he'll fold on the flop for 600 or so anyway, but just in case shorty has a pair and UTG has called with something like QJ, I'd think it's better to keep him in to maximise the chances of one of you hitting something on turn/river.

[kamrann]

True, but just like with stop and gos, if there's no obvious downside, then it doesn't matter how small the chances are that it will make a difference, you go for the option that has a chance of being more +EV without risk of being more -EV.

[poindexter]

If he calls then the pot would be 3600. At this size the pot is big enough to warrant isolating sb. It is pretty unlikely that utg will fold to an additional 600 bet but you definitely want to give it a try.