[bluefeet]

Hi DS,

You've asked what is an important question to you, and you deserve a little more than a "of course, push dummy" toned reply (from me). It's obvious from your first batch of posts, that you are genuine in your desire to improve your game (vs. the all too common, not so well disguised bad beat post).

Your description of your thought process is a common mistake made starting out - "I've worked so hard to get here, I don't want to screw it up now", or just as realistically "Pushing is scary as hell, I wish I could just hide long enough to make it ITM", or "damn this is a nice hand, I wish I could just show these bastards and kindly ask them to ship over their blinds".

The nature of the STT does not permit you to hold such thoughts - especially at this stage of the game. The blinds WILL increase. Opponents WILL be stealing your blinds. You MUST continue to accumlate chips.

Given the dynamics of this very table, as an observer, you must see that UTG+1 is hurting.

He only has 4BB's left. Another pass through the blinds will leave him 2BB's...and ZERO FE. If he doesn't push this orbit, he'll be forced to a) call with, hopefully a "decent" hand, or b) push with who knows what, looking at a likely 3-way.

He REALLY needs to push this hand to stay on top of the blinds.

Good News: Despite only having 4BB's, NO ONE has has many as 7!! This guy still has a TON of FE. Considering the likelihood of those behind holding a hand that can call an AI are slim.

Fantastic News: Not only does he have FE, but he has woken up to AKs!

You see where we're going. There IS no thought such as "well, this is pretty good, but if this guy has a pair, I wonder if I can get him to fold after seeing a scary flop".

Our #1 weapon is fold equity, followed by fold equity, and finally fold equity.

The opportunity to open here PERIOD is a blessing. You have no choice but to exercise your FE to it's fullest extent - pushing PF. Having done so, your regrets for having not outflipped 99 w/ your AKs shouldn't be any greater than for having pushed 75o into SB's AA.

1) learn to recognize the proper moves
2) MAKE the proper move
3) n/a (the results are of no consequence)