I suck. Blind size would matter quite a bit here. They were 100/200.

I agree with EP - blinds info would be helpful.

But, if 200/400 - then push your 88. You only have 7 BB so you have no real room for post flop play. 88 is good enough to push and see all the streets. You are really only afraid of a higher pocket pair. Most likely if you are called, it will be an A-something hand and you are racing with a slight lead at the start.

If 150/300 - then you have 9 BB and a bit of room to play. You might consider a standard 3xBB raise and hope you don't get called. If you are reraised or the flop comes high and you are convinced he has you beat you can get out of the hand and still be slightly ahead of the short stack.

at 100/200 I don't really like a push.
Considering that the players have not been over-aggro, I make a standard raise(600) and a c-bet of about 2/3 pot(800). I think I fold to the SB's push preflop and most likely call the BB's because of tilt considerations(he just doubled up the SB). This might not be optimal, but I think a push is overdoing it and folding is too weak.

Either way if you have to fold, you have anough chips to steal the blinds and are comparable to the other shortstack..

At 150/300 you do not have a lot of room to play. Any hand you'd raise with 9 BBs there, you should be shoving. Say you raise to 800 and BB shoves. You'd have about 1900 left in your stack, and the pot size would be about 4100. You're getting better than 2:1 and have invested nearly 30% of your stack on this hand already. Or if you raise to 800 and BB calls. You're down to 1900 chips, the flop comes [7s][5s], and the pot is about 1800. What else can you do but shove on that flop? This is why you just shove pre-flop if you have a good enough hand with 9 BBs.

At 100/200, that changes things a lot. This is a tough situation because of your medium stack. If you raise 2.5 or 3x bb, get called, and he checks to you on the flop, you're going to toss out another 3 or 4x bb on a continuation bet. So you'll be risking somewhere around 1200 chips, which is nearly half your stack!

There's nothing wrong with folding here.

With passive pre-flop players in the blinds, you can also open-limp on the button with the intention of betting whenever they check. The pot will be smaller so you won't need to risk as much. A good post on it in 2p2 by Raptor http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showf ... art=1&vc=1

With tight players in the blinds, a raise to 550 is good simply because they will fold so much pre-flop. It's going to suck having to make a continuation bet against them because of how much you need to risk, but like I said, they will fold pre-flop enough to make this raise worthwhile.

I think raising to 500-550 is probably the best play, but it's a difficult spot. In this case, I pushed. I estimated BB's calling range for a standard raise to be pretty high, and I didn't want to spend half my stack. I'm thinking SB's calling range for a push is like 5% and BB's maybe 15%, so I pushed. What I found interesting was that to have +EV in this spot with those calling ranges, you need your top 3.5% of hands, i.e., TT+ AK, so basically, pushing is not an option one should be considering here w/ 88. This is PS, so there is no 150/300 level. Next level is same blinds with 25 ante, and that doesn't expand things much, then next level is 200/400/25. At that level and those calling ranges, profitable pushes expands really wide, but not all that wide against typical ranges in that spot. I think I may be pushing too aggressively four handed when I'm third in chips. Anyone have any insight for that general scenario? Do you have a tighter push range when 3rd out of four?