[Rizen]

I'm not quite sure how to phrase this, and this may be a thread hijack so if so I apologize. One of my pet peeves is poker players accepting general 'rules' without understanding why the 'rule' exists and why it is the right play. I mean if you went to push/fold mode every time you stared down at <= 10BB you probably wouldn't do horribly, but at the same time if you know the hows and whys behind it all, you can make the proper adjustements and improve your game greatly. 10BB at the bubble is much different than 10BB at the beginning of hour 2 which is much different than 10BB at the final table which is much different than 10BB in a tournament where the avg stack is 8BB and the largest stack is 20BB.

People generally go into push/fold mode with 10BB because that's the point at which a raise pretty much pot commits you anyways and limping often just tosses away 10% or more of your stack. That being said, once you go into push/fold mode you need to take a look at your table situation and decide what kind of range you want to be pushing/folding with, as well as being flexible enough to toss certain hands in the right situation, as well as knowing if and when it may be time to deviate from your push/fold strategy.(AQo looks nice, but if you've got a couple of pushers/raisers in front of you, it may not be a good spot to gamble). Some things to take into account are if the site you're playing on has antes (as far as I know, party is the only one that doesn't, hence I play tighter with a shorter stack on party than on other sites since even though the blinds are high the antes aren't constantly whittling at my stack), how soon the blinds are raising (you can easily go from 10BB to 5BB as soon as the blinds raise, and that can change your situation a lot), how short the blinds are (short stacked blinds are more likely to call, depending on your holding that may be good or bad), as well as if both the SB/BB are posted (I know if someone busts when it's their turn to post the SB on party no one posts the SB and only the BB is posted, making the initial pot size smaller). It also makes a huge difference if you're the pusher or the caller. You can push with a wider range of hands than you can call with since you can win pots by pushing without a showdown while calling you must end up with the best hand.

All of these factors can change things a little bit. I think for the particular hand you gave, 99 is too good of a starting hand to give up at this stage and it's a pretty easy push for me. I'm also happy when AK calls for a coin flip (although not so much the 99). In the long run though I believe you would be better served learning the *WHY* behind this strategy, rather than just switching to all in/fold mode automatically when your stack gets to a certain point. In online tournaments the blinds escalate so fast you find yourself with <= 10BB an awful lot, and skillful play with a short stack can be the difference between final tabling and busting out on the bubble.

-Rizen