[AKQJ10]

[ QUOTE ]
Raising 88 in EP may have been marginal, especially since you are relatively short-stacked at this stage of the tourney (M~6),

[/ QUOTE ]

No. With M this low, and with 1200 more coming out of your stack the next couple of hands, you're looking for a hand that can either take down all the antes or gamble for all your chips. (The exception of course is if there's a BIG bubble in payout coming up, not just the chance to win half the buy-in. Then survival is much more important.) 88 is a favorite against everything except the top six pairs.

The problem with raising to "find out where you're at" is, if I know that makes up a lot of your less-than-all-in raises, I'm going to try very hard to paint a picture of where you're at that causes you to make bad decisions, e.g. by reraising. You're getting better than 3:2 (11200: 6700 or so) to call a reraise. Even if I'm fairly "honest" and only reraise AK, AQ, and 99-AA, you're getting odds to call. Therefore, I'm delighted if you decide my reraise with AQ must be pocket jacks and throw your hand away.

At these stack sizes, pushing 88 is fine. Raising it for value, determined to call a reraise or shove in your stack on the flop, is probably also fine.