$560 buy in tournament at Bay101. $28K first place, 233 runners, 110 left. Top 30 paid.

Blinds: 600/1200 with 1200 BB ante, 30min levels
Stack: ~20K (Starting stack: 30K), I am the short stack and everyone nearly covers me.
Position: UTG+2
Hand: A8o

Table is 8-handed, as two players busted quickly in previous hands. Everyone remaining has been playing pretty tight. I have been showing only premium hands (AKs, AKo, TT) in my all-ins so far. I played very few hands for nearly 3 hours. I pushed thrice against an open raise and the original raiser always folded, so I am guessing I have a tight image.

What are my options?

1. Fold
2. Shove
3. Raise 2500
3a - call a re-raise all-in
3b - fold to re-raise based on the player

I chose (2). Can I still do 3(b) here?

What is the range that you guys advice pushing here?

I choose option 1. As played 3b... or 3c - folding to a reraise period... if you're image is what you say it is.

Ok. What range should I consider shoving here? Does 8-handed play a role in our range?

55+, AT+ from that spot. 8 handed I just adjust so you’re considering players left to act.

Fold>>>>Raise/fold>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Shove=Raise/call

1. Get a good push/fold chart. You will see what Jonestown suggests.
2. With 17BB, it is still ok to have a raise fold range.
3. If you think 2 is true, the hands at the bottom of your raising ranges are trivial folds to a raise behind you.
4. This hand just plays so poorly as an open, I would fold without much thought. Easily dominated Aces are terrible hands to play, especially OOP.
5. The push fold chart I have says this hand isn't a jam until we have just 8BB. Gives you an idea how far off it is.
6. At 9BB, where A8o is not a jam, hands like Q9s T8s, and all pairs are better jamming candidates. This because you will so often be dominated when you are called (although the removal effects of an ace are nice, they aren't enough)

Agree. I think I made a mistake, haven't played MTTs as much, used to play online pre black Friday.

Care to share the push/fold chart? Thanks.

I use the one from Jonathan Little. It is a free app.

Fold pre

Google Nash equilibrium or Jennifear to find good push fold charts.

I absolutely think we can have a few raise/folds even at this stack depth, but we should pick hands like A9s that are not quite good enough to shove. A8o is probably too far down in our range to use in that manner.

Fold.

From EP with this stack, I have an open/fold range. And if I was in push/fold mode, this hand is way too weak to push from here with these stacks.

The interesting thing here is how to split the 2 ranges. I think we want most of our nut hands, and some hands that flop well as our opens; medium pairs, and some big offsuit Ax as our shoves.

What I do is in EP when my range is tighter and most of the range can call off a typical shove range is my open small. In MP and LP where my range becomes harder to defend I shove.

If you try to split your ranges, you might find what seems like logical spots for your hands, but it will usually cap one of the ranges, making you vulnerable to exploitation.

Granted, against opponent's not able to exploit you, it wouldn't matter.

I think it's perfectly fine to have a polar strategy in EP at these stack depths - my trap min raise range is mostly going to be QQ-AA anyway, sometimes JJ. So my jam range would have plenty of strong hands (most of my remaining PP, strong Ax, strong suited broadways) that should do fine if we get called. And then we mix hands just outside that range that we min-raise with the intention of folding to a jam, but are decent enough if we're forced to play post-flop.

As long as we have some strong hands in our jam range I don't think we need to worry about being capped so much. Plus in most cases we're creating an SPR that lends itself to pretty easy post flop decisions, so I'm not quite as worried about protecting my range the way I would be deeper.

It really depends on my table. If I am playing a daily at Harrah's I will try to level them and min raise big pairs, since they are mostly weak players. I don't even worry about balancing my ranges against this group.

Playing Parx Deep Stax or Borgata opens though the player pool is better and probably will stick to my standard strategy.