$10 SNG on UB. 7 people left, blinds 50/100, leader has 4000, I have 1500, rest has <1000.
My opponent in this hand started out very aggressively: raising 5 limpers from the SB with KJ. Later (he now has 700 in chips) he limped in with many hands. He raises big with pocket pairs. I won two hands from him; in both cases he folded when I raised him.
My image must be very tight, since I've played about 4 hands so far and won all of them.

Hand: Opponent limps in, I'm on the button with 99. No callers. I raise the pot (450), hoping to take it there. Blinds fold. Opponent, however, pushes all in. It's only 150 extra for me, so I call, figuring that we have a coinflip. Well, he had KT and won the hand.

Was my preflop raise a mistake? With stacks as they were, I had a good chance to make the money. Should I just limp and not attempt any steals?

Pieter

I think the play would be fine if the limper had a bigger stack, because he will fold a large percentage of the time. A limper with a short stack is going to go all in alot of the time.
Raising with 99 on the button is fine, but make sure you see who limped and also how much the blinds have in their stacks. If one of them is short stacked, you going to get called much more often.

I don't think you did much wrong here. Personally I might have been inclined to limp and see a flop, but I don't think there is anything wrong with the raise. Your opponent, as so often at this level, made either a horrendously reckless or, to be unduly kind to him, an inspirational call against you (I know where my money would be on this one), especially as you had such a tight image.

Iceman's points about his stack are spot on, though, and something that I know I personally need to be more aware of. With 1500 chips, you could have limped here, seen a flop, and folded if necessary. Weak tight, perhaps, but in my view in the money is pretty much all you should be focussed on in SnGs.

I'm not sure if I understand the stack size consideration well enough. If someone has about 7 BB left, then he will either fold or go all in, right? Why would you limp first in? The fact my opponent limped in made me think he had something like a weak suited ace with which he hoped to get lucky on the flop. Especially BECAUSE he had a short stack, I figured he couldn't make a call and would save his money for a better occasion.

If I have a big stack and hold KJo, then I might take a chance, call a raise and see a flop, since I'm still in good shape if I have to lay it down. But if I'm a short stack I don't want to play this hand against someone who raised me, because I don't even know if it's going to be a coinflip.
Maybe my logic is flawed here, but the shorter my stack, the less likely I would be to call such a raise, unless I had only 2BB left or so. Isn't it the case that the larger stacks are more likely to call you because they can afford to? It is my experience in these cheap SNG's that the big stacks play tons of hands and hardly ever fold. Therefore, I would probably limp in with my 99 against a larger stack to see a cheap flop and double up if I hit it my set, but apparently that is not correct.

Thanks, Pieter

The reason the short stack would be more likely to call all in if raised: He limped for 100, leaving him 600, or 6 BBs. If he folded here after your raise, he would have been a couple of hands away from being on the blinds again. This makes him more inclined to push it even with an inferior hand, as he knows he aint that far away from hitting the blinds.

You are right in the sense that he should have just folded his K 10 rather than limping. However, at this level, they very rarely do what they 'should' do, and you must account for that in your decisions. Just because you, as an intelligent, tight player wouldn't do something doesn't mean these monkeys won't.

For the record, and, again, even though many many players at this level do it, I don't like calling raises with a big stack in sngs with marginal hands like KJ like you say you do. Why bother? If you have got a stack that can take you into the final 3 ITM, then losing chips is far worse in net loss terms than gaining them. And it is so easy to run into a hand that dominates you with KJ. The precise reason you don't want to get involved with a big stack with that hand is cause you can lose so much with it- when her has AJ and a J flops, etc. I agree, though, that against a big stack, you do want to limp w 99, and give it up if you fail to hit your set/have an overpair to the flop.