[Jon_AK]

this situation all depends on the table you're at... A $5 MTT has a wide range of players, all the way from the good thinking, good decision making player down to a total donk who just wants to bust out so they can go to bed.

Your main concern is the BB and how loose you have seen him call. Obviously you're in a horribly difficult spot to catch KJ considering your M combined with position. I liked the first posters reply of limping and seeing how the table reacts to your limp. If it is folded to the blinds, you then can easily push them off because you have just as much sway power as they do at this point after seeing a flop.

If i was in your position, and felt the table had been playing fairly tight, then I would have a nice shove and pray that I'm not dominated by AK or AJ if someone decideds to call. When deciding wether or not to shove, your M is more important than where u stand compared to average stack (with some exceptions when you have a huge stack and can make some really loose calls to eliminated a short stack).

and as far as prize payout, you need to be gunning for 1st at all times. Don't try to hang and squeak into top 10; This is a bad way of thinking that will hurt your ROI in the long run.

So ultimately, if it seems as though this table has been pretty quite... I would push all in. Also try to take note on the BB and think back if it seems as though people have been pushing on him a lot lately because if everyone folds to him and he's sittin there w/ Ax, he may just pull the trigger from a semi-tilt condition of being pushed around too much.

also, you are short handed so the blinds will be hiting u sooner and sooner so you need to be maximally aggressive at this stage of the tournament in order to stay alive/chip up for the final table. You may also see that everone else is thinking the same as you as far as payout structure; Exploit this and use it throughout every tournament you play.


So to sum it up:
1. your M=5
2. you catch KJs UTG
3. table is short handed
4. prize structure drop off/final table bubble is present
5. you have been playing tight ABC poker

I pull the trigger and shove... hope someone comes along to double me up, putting me in the position to take down the entire thing.... but that's just how I play [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]