$22 AJs Bubble In a Raised Pot

Interesting situation. Hero is short stacked and gets AJs in BB. Big blind at 300, nearly 33% of Hero's remaining stack. UTG folds, Button minraises, and its folded to Hero. Button hasn't been too active with raises, so Hero expects to be no better than a coinflip if he pushes. Likely range is any pocket pair, any decent ace, two broadway cards.

Additionally, SB is playing awfully. He was the chipleader until a few hands ago, and then he twice in a row called big bets on a hand preflop, flop, and turn before folding to a bet that was about 1/8th pot on the river, taking himself from 3500 to 900 chips without even seeing a showdown.

Hero would normally push this and hope to win the coinflip with so little behind after posting, but there is a real possibility that SB will tilt off the rest of his chips if Hero waits it out and Hero will get ITM.

Given all that, is there any way that Hero isn't pushing here?


Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t300 (4 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx

Button (t2970)
SB (t994)
Hero (t1026)
UTG (t3010)

Preflop: Hero is BB with J[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img].
<font color="#666666">1 fold</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Button raises to t600</font>, <font color="#666666">1 fold</font>.

Hero ???

Has the button been so tight that you can actually eliminate A8-A10? I think that unless you can be sure he wont raise those hands then this is a easy push.

[Femto]

poooosh

[Pokerprowannabe]

Easy push IMO. Button is probably trying to steal the blinds, and if you fold here, you have squat leftover.

No, I couldn't eliminate those. I put his range on any PP, A7+, KQ, KJ. I figured I'd be behind, but didn't think I'd have a better choice to get value for my dwindling stack and pushed.

I didn't think there was any way I was getting away from the hand, looks like you guys agree.

[aaronk56]

If that's the range you put him on you're ahead. Easy push.

Just to add more weight to the notion of pushing, I push too.

Yeah, I figured I was one side of a close coinflip with an outside chance of being way ahead. It was more a decision not based on my cards or his cards, but based on the likelihood of being able to use my remaining chips to outlast the other short stack who was playing poorly.

I pushed more because I figured the only chance I had to do something better than a 3rd place required a push there, while if I had folded and hoped the other small stack busted out, I might have been able to squeak into 3rd but would have likely not had enough chips to make a move to finish 1st/2nd.