[petronder]

short 800 chip stack. Blinds 75/150. I'm in SB. ~200 players left in a 1300 player tourney.

I am holding 88.

One raise to 475. One caller. I am up. What should I do?

I considered for a long time pushing all-in. If I did, I was certain I would get two callers from a 6000 and an 8000 stack respectively. I folded figuring I was facing 3 or 4 overcards and possibly an overpair. I was right, there were 4 different overcards. Both players paired, a J and a Q with KJ and AQ. Of course an 8 flopped also. I would have tripled up, but alas, I wimped out. I wanted to force a head-up situation but couldn't make it happen there, so I caved and folded.

A few minutes later, I did get AQ and got it heads up against QJ. He caught a jack and I was out

[easyguy]

I saw somewhere a person posted a guide that actually gave you some kind of concrete scale to measure what "hand value" you should consider making a move with if you're short stacked in a tournament. Anyone else see what I'm talking about, or did I dream it up?

[DeepBlue]

No it exists, although that is only as far as statistics are concerned - sometimes you have to consider gut instinct.

With that hand though, I would be tempted to commit my stack. If you're short, then you need to double up or get out of the game, sitting like a duck waiting for a pair of aces could watch you dwindle your stack down to nothing through blinds alone.

Call it, see the flop, if you're lucky enough to see an 8 come down or even another pair, then perhaps go all-in. If somebody calls, you've got a chance, if they don't, you've just made a few hundred cheap. It's not an ideal situation, but as I said, you can soon become a corpse waiting for that magic hand to come in.