[flyingmoose]

I'm glad you posted this, because overbet pushes with Ms in the 8-10 range are part of my game, but a part I never discuss because everybody seems to be against them. More than anything these overbet open-pushes with Ms of 8-10 do help me 8-table more successfully by making the game easier on me. You often add the substantial blinds to your stack, and are also often ahead when called.

I think too much of poker theory is based on us being better than the oposition. No matter how good you are, playing postflop in a pot that is about the size of your stack is really hard. You have to make a decision for all your chips based on very little information (basically a preflop call). When you're in position, you're open to a stop-and-go. With a pot that size you're also easily trapped. As an 8-tabler I simply can't make the right decision often enough in these situations, and my opponent has too many tools to outplay me because of the awkward pot. I find it best to avoid these situations by simply shoving at the pot to begin with when the pot is significant to my stack (M<~10).

Most importantly -- and you already covered this -- when your stack is in the 10-ish M range, you really don't mind racing. These are the spots where acquiring a stack you can play poker with has a huge implied EV to it for many reasons (all of which have been covered in depth in other threads).