Fold, Call, All-In, aieee! Deliberations of a tourney newbie
 

Hello, all!

I'm a limit HE player who has recently ventured into playing live NL HE tournaments run by an aquaintance. I've got a severe shortage of skills and knowledge of NL in general, and tournaments, too, so I was wondering if somebody could help me out.

This weekend I played a NL HE tourney with 41 players. We started with 1500T. The players seemed pretty decent for the most part. About 2 hours into it, the field was down to ~30 players. The blinds were 25/50, I had ~1000T, and was the 3rd-smallest stack at my table.

I got 77 UTG and raised it to 200 (standard for that point in the tourney, it seems). A medium stack called, and the short stack, who had been complaining about getting crappy cards all day, said "Finally I've got some cards." and pushed all-in for ~500T.

Now what's my best course of action here? Fold? Call? All-in? Throw my cards in the air and do a dance?

Also, if someone wants to berate me for my open raise, that's cool too. I unfortunately don't know what I'm doing in NL tournaments...

Thanks in advance,
-Grendel

Re: Fold, Call, All-In, aieee! Deliberations of a tourney newbie
 

some of the more intelligent people here can elaborate better, but i don't think you can just call. you have 800 left and the all-in behind you will leave you with 500 or 300, depending on how you read that sentence. either way, i don't think you've got enough of a stack to just call, as you've pretty much committed yourself to go all-in later in the hand.

some questions to ask yourself:

1. how much does that medium stack actually have? that is, if you re-raise all-in, is that too much for him to call without a monster and quite possibly you may be able to push him off such hands as 88-JJ that have you dominated.

2. what's the read on the other short stack? what have they been playing and how did they become the short stack? is "Finally I've got good cards" KK, AA, AKs, something like that, or is it JTo?

the open-raise is what it is...i don't mind it too much, but i'd rather see it in MP than UTG.

i say if you think you can isolate, re-raise, get the short stack heads-up, and hope for the best. if not, fold.