Cowardly Muck, or not so bad?

[Magician]

$30 + $3, 2 table Sit 'n Go on Pokerstars

Blinds are $75/$150, about 11 players left, the table I'm on is 5-handed.

I've got 1,700 chips making me quite short-stacked.

UTG (big stack with 6K chips) raises to 300. Folded to me in the SB. I have pocket 99.

I find his little raise suspicious and I don't know what it means. I don't think calling is right here as 225 would be a big chunk of my stack and if I'm ahead I am giving away 3 free cards. So it's either raise or fold.

He seems to be quite tight and his baby raise UTG seems to me to say two things:

a) he has a hand
b) he wants action

I think for a long time - and muck.

Was this cowardly? Should I have snapped back?

I thought that if I snapped back he would just call and then I'd have a tough decision to make on the flop.

It seemed to me the only real choices were to move in or muck.

But if I move in, I either:

a) win a small pot relative to the stack I am risking if he mucks

b) when called, I am at best a small favorite and quite easily a big dog

[curtains]

I think its slightly cowardly to be honest. If it was a full game of 8-9 players, then folding might very well be the best option, but now you have a hand that becomes premium in a 5 handed game, and there is already 525 in the pot....which you do call a small pot, but when you only have 1700 in chips, 525 is NOT a small amount. Also dont always suspect minimum raises as big hands....some people simply have no idea what they are doing and often raise the minimum. Some of the time you will run into an overpair and be out (unless you get lucky)...sometimes AK , but more often than not you will see a fold, and tack on 25% to your stack.

[Guy McSucker]

5-handed, any position is steal position, so he might be trying to take the blinds and too scared to raise a decent sum. Have there been other minimum raises? Sometimes at these tables you see the blinds fold to minimum raises hand after hand. I'll assume that's not the case here since you mention that it surprised you.

99 is about the trickiest holding you could have here. Argh. I agree calling is bad, unless you want to try the stop-and-go play: call preflop and bet all-in on any flop. This sometimes gains when the raiser has an unpaired hand and misses, which he will do most of the time. It's more useful when your stack is smaller and he is wrong to fold his no-pair on the flop but does so anyway.

Anyway... I am 50-50 between folding and moving in. If I have seen this player fold to a reraise before I would be swung towards moving in.

Guy.