Failed Steal Attempt on Bubble

[plexiq]

Hi,
i played my first live SnG's today.

Price structure "typical": 5:3:2

One interesting hand that came up on the bubble. I dont have exact chipcounts, but it was something like this:

CO: 3300
BU (Hero): T4600
SB: T3700
BB: T3400

Blinds: 300/600

Reads: I was playing pretty tight, didnt have much action before that hand. Other players seemed solid, CO & SB played pretty standard so far.

The BB was extremely aggressive right from the start, playing lots of pots. I picked up from some comments that this guy won a few reasonably sized tourneys lately, so i was assuming he s probably the best player at the table.

CO folds,
Hero raises T1500 with 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]4[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img].
SB raises to T3700 and is all-in.
BB calls T3400 and is all-in.
Hero?

Total pot: 8600.
Hero is getting ~4:1 odds on this call. Action?

The T1500 raise is quite weird, should have been all-in or fold. Anyway, as played - what is the correct action?

My reasoning was that at least the BB had to have a really good hand. (The SB all-in, and BB had no reason to believe that i would fold this hand. I dont expect a good player to call in this situation, without some premium hand.)

I thought my 54s may be marginally +ChipEV to call, given the nice pot odds. However, most of the time a call will leave me with a crippled stack. If i fold, SB or BB will either bust or be left w/ T300 - which gets me in the money with an intact stack.

Actual hand: Hero folds, SB's QJo catches two Queens to bust BB's KK.

BB was obviously very surprised by my fold, and we had a short discussion about the hand afterwards. He thought folding was too weak here.

Thoughts?

[vers]

one of the two other players is going to bust or near bust so there's no point taking an unnecessary risk. 3000 chips at 3/6 blinds certainly isn't great, but at least if it's 3 handed, 1 double up and you're back in it. I don't like the steal at all w/ that hand on the button. If you were SB vs BB then 54s steal is fine I think if u think the BB will lay down a lot of hands. Even though you're getting good odds on the call, 1 of the two will bust and you have 20% locked up. 45 is unlikely to win vs one decent hand (SB) and one surely great hand BB so you'd have to make 2p or a flush/straight or something. Just mucking is fine.

[Kibby]

[ QUOTE ]
Just mucking is [b]the only right move.

[/ QUOTE ]FYP

[plexiq]

Thanks for the replies. So, i guess my fold was alright. The T1500 raise is still horrible i think,..is this supposed to be an easy fold right away?

Anyway, when thinking about this hand i noticed another funny thing: When calling the preflop all-in, the best "realistic" scenario that this hand can turn out for me in terms of ChipEV is that both SB&BB have the same hand (eg: both AK, AQ, etc). If im not completely off, this scenario is about the worst possible $EV-wise.

[Kibby]

Generally speaking, you want to push allin or fold when you have 10BBs or less. Whether this is a good idea or not depends on the calling ranges of you opponents. if you're opponents are tight and afraid of your bigstack, you probably want to push this and steal the blinds. In all likelihood, you opponents have too large a calling range to make this a good idea and its a fold.

FYI- I didn't see that you were the big stack last time. This makes a call more acceptable but I still don't think 45s is good enough.