Late in MTT: Medium PP in UTG/EP

[98romaine]

Seeking thoughts/advice as I'm trying to improve my play with medium pocket pairs 9-9 or below UTG, UTG+1, and EP during the late stages of MTT, two tables left or final table. My last two live MTT tournaments and my last online MTT they have been my undoing when we have gotten down to the final 15-16 players or less.

I think I am playing them too fast but I'm thinking (maybe incorrectly) that with rapid blind levels (typically 15 mins) they need to be played aggressively.

Example: Final table of live 30 person MTT, blinds at 500/1000 ante 50 I have 7-7 UTG+1 and raise to 3500 (my stack around 17k) only caller is the SB who moves in with a little less than 8k with 10-10, I call and lose more than 50% of my stack. Even raising 2.5x BB when you figure in the BB and ante's there are still good odds for a call.

Any constructive advice on handling these situatiions would be much appreciated...

Maybe H. Lederer said it best when making a call based on the size of the pot,"Make the laydown, and realize the chips that you leave yourself with may prove to be the chips that you win the tournament with."

[98romaine]

My bad, wrong forum...sorry.