Play a Hand With the Masters #1 Pre-Flop

[Lloyd]

Welcome to our first "Hand With the Masters". Thanks again to jccookjr for suggesting this as a way to make the forum more valuable.

Here's how this is going to work (this time, I'm open for suggestions for our next hand):

1. I've sent the hand to our expert panel (who will be announced soon) decision point by decision point. So they only had access to the information that they would have had if they were playing the hand themselves. Obviously, this was an actual hand (contributed by Sossman) and when a panelist's line deviated from how the hand was played they still played the hand out as it actually went down. So if they said they would fold and in the actual hand it was raised, they played the next decision point as if they had raised.

2. I'm going to post the hand here step by step over the next couple of days. This will make it as real as possible. Additional decision points will be added to this post so you'll have to check back here every day (I plan on adding a decision point approximately every 24 hours).

3. Once everyone has had a chance to comment on all aspects of the hand, I'll post how our experts played it out along with the thought process they have presented. We'll then give them an opportunity to post and discuss why they liked one approach versus another.

4. We'll bring the forum back to continue the discussion. Essentially, this will be the hand we'll talk about over the next week.

So without further adieu:

Setup

$10,000 Buy-In Event
Day 1
Blinds 75/150 and will go up to 100/200 on the next hand
Hero has been at the table for about an hour with no unusual play. All players are unknown except for Miami John to his direct left. The CO in this hand has been playing pretty tight.

Relevant Stacks

CO 25,000
Hero 11,500
MJ 13,000
BB 9,800

Pre-Flop
Everyone folds to the CO who limps for T150. Hero is on the button with A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] J[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] and ????????

Do you fold, call, or raise? If you raise, to what amount? What's your thought process behind your decision? What range of hands would you put the CO on at this point?

[b]The hand is continued here but make sure you read this post first, think about, and respond as to how you'd play so far.