[Custer]

My thoughts are very much on the same line as Ilya. I would usually fold this hand PF. I've been experimenting with trying to see a few more flops in situations like these, where I have a short stack on the bubble. My general strategy when I have such a small stack at the 50-100 and 75-150 blind levels that I have very little FE is to try to get to flops where my small amount of chips have more FE. Like when I have <400 chips at 50-100 and <600 chips at 75-150. Particularly when the stacks behind you are fairly large, I've found that I have very little PF FE in these spots. But I've been very successful at using those same chips to steal pots on the flop, once my opponent(s) miss. So I've been playing around with taking this idea one step further, with a slightly greater amount of chips, like in the situation in this hand. Anyone ever thought about or tried this? Comments?

On the flop in this hand, I had planned to push most flops, but this one looked esp. bad. As long as my opponent had a reasonable raising hand, he wouldn't fold this flop unless he had precisely 77-99, and he might call those. So I checked. When he checked the flop, I figured he now would be even more likely to call with 77-99, didn't figure that he would now try to steal the pot with the worse hand after he passed on that opportunity on the flop, so I checked again. Should I have pushed the turn? maybe. I'm still not sure what I think. As to the river, this seems like an easy check the way the hand has developed.

moses