Last night I was playing a $10 buy-in hyper turbo MTT, and although I think I made pretty solid decisions throughout, I found myself a little confused about how the format should effect my push/fold ranges. By the time we were on the bubble, I think the average stack was less than 10bb! So everyone is pretty much playing push/fold, but it's a weird spot because you might want to shove wide because your fold equity is so high (everyone is so short that 10bb is actually a lot) and you stand to gain a lot because blinds are so high, but at the same time if you sit patiently and just try to survive (push fairly tight, try to just maintain ~10bb), your chances are pretty good to make final table because people bust at such a high rate. Anybody have any wisdom to share regarding this dynamic?


To further illustrate my point, I made it to the final table playing this way basically (and getting lucky at least once or twice...). It was down to 5 players, with 5th place paying $117, 4th was $175 or something, 3rd $260 I think, 2nd ~$370 and 1st is $560. At this point there were 3 players (including myself) with shorter stacks (~450K, with bb at 180k!!!) and two players had around 1.2M chips. So I get A9o sitting UTG+1 and I shove. The guy in the bb (one of the big stacks) wakes up with AK and I bust in 5th place (even though I hit a 9 on the flop! Rivered a king...). I don't really think I made a bad play because if I stole those blinds I'd be in good position for at least 3rd, and if bb does call I'm most likely in pretty good shape, but I was annoyed because one of the bigger stacks actually busted like 2 hands later and then one of the shorter stacks busts immediately after that, so the one guy got $370 by just sitting on 2.5bb. It makes me wonder, is that the move?? Just wait for others to bust?

I look forward to reading your thoughts!

Thanks!

shoving A9o with 2.5bbs is never bad