Thanks Telemachus for your response - here's my thoughts about the situation.

First of all, the guy had me covered by a few hundred. His raise, to me, was a "bad" one - because it put in a fair amount of his chips - but it also indicated, to me, that he wanted to leave some in his stack in case the heat came on. In other words, his minimum raise indicates to me that he's weak. In all honesty, when it got to me, I immediately put him on a weak ace or at best a low pair (say up to tens). I considered it an outside chance that he had a hand that dominated me (say up to 5%)

I like my hand in this situation. It is strong enough for me to take control and push here, and my push will either a) be enough to knock him off of his hand, and then I take the pot or b) be strong enough that even when I am called I've got good equity in the pot.

Given that I felt he was on a weak ace, I knew I couldn't just call here. I didn't want to see a flop with this hand - and I definitely didn't want anyone to come in behind me. If I flat called, the BB would be in a good position to call as well or even raise to push everyone off of their hands. Even the SB could do the same.

So, to me, this was an all-in or fold situation. The case for the fold however, in my opinion, is not very strong. I've only got slightly over 6BB at this point. Each round at this level costs me 33% of my stack. Once the blinds increase to 600/1200 with a 75 ante - I'm in deep trouble.

So, in any case, I pushed - the blinds folded and he used up most of his time before he eventually called. He had A4o - I flopped the nut flush draw (he gets a pair off of this), but I miss on improving further and I'm out.

I'm not really convinced I made a good move here - though I would think that most people would fold off A4o that late in the tourney to a substantial raise (maybe not...). This is a situation though, if I'm called, I'm either a coinflip, 40% or substantially worse. Even though I felt it was at worst a 60% chance of knocking me out - I'm still out 3 out of 5 times in that case.

Further thoughts anyone?

/d

Its one of those classic situtations I am sure all BTPers run into- where you want your opponent to do the 'right' thing and fold! I hate calling for all my chips with Ax- you are so often dominated, and really the best you can hope for is to be a 50/50 shot against even money- althouugh not in this case, but you get my drift.

His real mistake, of course, was committing that proportion of his stack preflop without pushing all in.

Personally, in your shoes, I prefer to push in these situations with marginal hands when there is no previous action, or at least no raise. In my experience, the players are so weak at the levels I play that they will make very poor desperation calls, like this one, which can get you into trouble.

Good post this Star- this kind of critical analysis always makes me think again about how and why I do certain things, which i find very useful.