Blind Stealing Leads to Collapse

[EasyGoer]

It's down to 12 (from 100) in the Sunday Night $200 No Limit Tourney at Lucky Chances. Winner gets $7K. Tenth place gets $400.

Blinds are I believe 1200-2400 and antes are 400 with six players at the table. I have about 17K in chips which is a little more than average at the table.

I am generally a tight player but since I have been getting good cards I have been in more pots than the average player but my image is by no means loose.

I am in the small blind. All fold to me. I have Kc 9c. I raise 5K hoping to steal the big blind. The big blind is a good player who can be tricky. He moves all in on me. He has about the same number of chips as me. I believe I should have folded at this point but I thought he might be putting a move on me or read weakness when I only raised 5K since I had on all other occassions raised all-in. I stupidly called. He turmed over Ad Tc. No one improved and his ace high is good.

Please critique both my raise of the big blind and my call of his all-in.

Thanks.

[Ulysses]

I could make some arguments for various options pre-flop. But one thing's for sure. If you're going to call his re-raise, you'd be better off just pushing in the first place. With the amount of chips you have left, easy fold to his push.

[Greg (FossilMan)]

Given the short stacked nature of this event right now, I think your only raise here is all-in. Yes, it sucks to be a one-move Johnny, but a pot-sized raise is well over half your stack. The only reason to make the raise you made is if you know you can make a correct laydown if reraised. Apparently that wasn't the case.

I would rather limp in here than make a medium raise. The medium raise commits you to the pot anyway, while the limp doesn't. Plus, some players with AT will do this reraise when you raise (hoping to get you to lay it down now that the pot is big), but will check behind you when you limp (hoping to trap you for a bigger pot).

Folding isn't terrible, since your hand is hard to flop big with (unlike suited connectors or pairs), but I would probably limp here against opponents who won't fold, and raise all-in against opponents who can fold semi-decent hands.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)