Final table bubble hand- reckless or robusto?

[T_Mac]

Ok its been a long time since I've made a FT on Pokerstars, and its starting to bother me. I have a crapload of 10th-18th place finishs in this time. At first I thought I was starting to tighten up too much on the FT bubble, but this hand I'm not sure if I was too reckless.

There were 15 left in this 50$ freezeout. Four people (including me) were sitting pretty comfortably with 100k chips, while the average was about 70k. I feel like I had a skill advantage over these players, and was doing pretty well nursing my stack and stealing.

The table was 7 handed, and it was folded to the button who was one of the 100k stacks. He had not been getting out of line at all with his raises preflop with his bigger stack, though he would definitely loosen his raising requirements in LP. It was folded to him on the button and he raised to 18000 at 3000/6000 blinds with antes. I was in the BB with A9 and decided to push???

Can one of you math guys run some calculations on the EV of this push? The buyin for this tourney made it such that only finishing first or possibly second was valuable for me. But I'm not sure if I'm throwing away money by making this risky play at a point where I can pretty much coast to the FT...

So is this hand a good example of playing to win? Or is it just reckless and dumb... [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[betgo]

Good resteal. Plays like this almost have to be cEV+ with all the chips you gain if villain folds.

With A9o, you are likely in trouble if called, but it's as good a hand to push with as a medium suited connector or something.

[Soulman]

Resteals are always totally situation-dependent - you have to incorporate them in your game, but sometimes they will (obviously) go awry and you run head-first into a monster. Without doing the math, this looks perfectly fine to me with the way you described the situation.

[Cornell Fiji]

You are probably drawing to 3 outs when called but against a 7 handed button raise and around 30k in the pot I agree that this is a good spot for a resteal.

Have you seen the villain in action postflop at all? If the villain had been weak postflop I might consider smooth calling his bet and leading for 25k on any flop that does not contain an ace. The downside is that you could obviously get bluffed off your hand or you can let his KJs spike a pair but if he is the type to lay down AJ-AK on an all unders flop then this might be a better line to take because you will also be able to fold out most pocket pairs too (assuming that he is weak)

I am not sure which play is better... I would have probably called and led any flop but I think that the push is fine too

Sorry it did not work out for you (try to not post results in your OP as it will bias the responses that you receive)

[Soulman]

[ QUOTE ]
You are probably drawing to 3 outs when called but against a 7 handed button raise and around 30k in the pot I agree that this is a good spot for a resteal.

[/ QUOTE ]
Villain is getting 1.6:1 to call - assuming hero only pushes with top 3% (which is obviously way too tight, 99+, AKs), he is correct to call with top 9% due to pot odds - 88+,ATs+,KTs+,QJs,AJo+,KQo. Lots of hands there you're flipping with or you're live against.

[mornelth]

It's fine in my book.

OBV, if you see him calling you should barf and start praying for a 9, but you will also take it down often enough uncontested to be +EV