[BadBatsuMaru]

You can't possibly justify any move except going all-in here.

You have an M of 7.26 and you are the short stack. You need to push. 88 is in the top 3% of hands. There is very little chance you'll see anything better in the next 3 hands. Don't fool yourself by saying, "Hey, I've got 11 big bets." You're in bad shape.

7-handed your effective M is actually 5.09. You also have less than half the average stack size. The blinds hit you in 3 hands, and then they will be 50/100 -- the biggest jump in the tournament (notice level 3-4 is the only time the blinds actually double). If you fold here, you will absolutely need to go all-in with any 2 cards next chance you get that you are first to act or else you'll be blinded away.

In 4 hands you post 100 to BB, and you're down to 445, then 50 SB and you're down to 395. If you haven't picked up a hand by then, your effective M will be 1.83 and you will be down to 1/3 the average stack. You will likely be put all-in against whichever one of the 3 big stacks happens to have the best hand.

The blinds are going to hurt you so much that even if you do get AA in four hands and double-up, your M will still be slightly lower than it is now.

Even if jayjmcgh is extremely conservative (which would mean he's stupid, since he's in almost as bad a shape as you are) and you think he's slowplaying something huge, you don't have much choice here.

88 isn't such a great hand that you can slowplay, though. You need to go all-in because you need all the leverage you have to try and fold the blinds and go heads-up.

I think there are a lot of coin-flip hands you might get called by here, and in this spot you should be happy to have a 55% shot against overcards. You might even get a call from A7 or a lower pair and be a huge favorite.

If the whole table's playing ridiculously tight, you still can't fold here, and what are you going to do if you call? If you just call, the BB has to call because he's getting such good odds, but let's just pretend he doesn't. You call and you're heads-up. The pot is $275. The flop is K93 and he checks to you. What do you do? Maybe he missed his hand. Maybe he has A3 and will call a decent bet. Maybe he has AJ. Maybe he has KK and can't contain himself. At that point your choices really suck -- you bet and he folds, you bet and get snapped off by a better hand (at which point you're almost pot committed if you bet $150, he raises all-in, now you have to call $295 for pot that's going to be $1165), or you check and give a free card that could beat you.