Hypothetical short stack decision late in tourney...

[ThrillFactor]

You are miles from any significant change in payout.
You are UTG+1 with t7000 and are dealt A9s
BB is t1000 but will go up to t1500 after this hand.
UTG open-raises to t2500.

Assume your only options are push this hand or push the next hand blind.

Discuss the pros and cons of each.

[MLG]

You should probably also include take your BB. I would rate my options as push UTG blind (Assuming nobody knew i was pushing blind) take my BB and then pushing A9.

[MLG]

I should elaborate a little. I think pushing the A9s there is bad. I think pushing UTG with a very wide range is better, and folding your worst hand and doing the same thing on the BB.

[crookedhat99]

oh, oops i misread MLG's post. Instead of "assuming nobody knew I was pushing blind" I thought it was "assuming everybody knew I was pushing blind". My bad

[sapster]

I don't think I can push here knowing I'm going to get called and look for a better spot, and I usually feel like I'm too eager to gamble when im shortstacked. Against the range of hands utg has I don't think its mathematically correct to put it in here. I'm curious to hear others opinions.

[crookedhat99]

By pushing blind (and declaring it), wouldn't that decrease you're folding equity enough that it would make the play not worth doing?

[ThrillFactor]

Of course you're not declaring that to the table. The argument is are you better off playing for your tourney life with (1) an easily be dominated but decent hand after an UTG raiser, or (2) two random cards as first-in the next hand.

[curtains]

Why should I assume these are my only options? Its ridiculous, you can fold past your blinds and still have some chips (over 3x the BB after blinds pass you). I think moving allin here is bad, and moving in blind next hand is completely unneccessary.

[ThrillFactor]

This is a very specific discussion about a hand in another post. Of course you have many other options, but for the sake of this argument we limit it to the two options.

If you had to choose which hand to risk your tourney life on, would it be:

(1) a decent hand but one that is easily dominated AFTER an UTG raiser. Assume you have decent fold equity against the rest of the field, but very little against UTG.

or

(2) two random cards with the benefit of being first-in and having decent fold equity (7BB).

[curtains]

Id definitely rather push next hand, because at least there is reasonable fold equity. But I still think it doesn't make sense to eliminate certain options when deciding upon a play. If folding is the best play why should we ignore it?