Ive played about 8 Sngs and i finally won my first one and then i played decent in my next one and chopped. But i have a question about a play that i made in a previous tourney.

Now this was at a live tourney and i was the chip leader at the table (2 tables left after 8 had been folded) and i had about 20k. The chip leader sits to my left and im the small blind. (Chip leader had about 60k) I pick up pocket Jacks and its folded around to me and i push and he calls me with AK. He wins and i bust out at about 15th. SHould i have waited for a better spot. I saw the chip leader play about 3 hands before this and hes pushed/called with hands from J8-AK,

What were the blinds?

400-800...sorry, i forgot to post that. its been a while since ive posted here.

Raise it up to about 2000-2400 then shove over the villian when he 3bets his AK. Win the race and become new chipleader or hit the rail and find a new tourney. Maybe we are deep enough to see a flop OOP, but I'm not sure because a good percentage of the time the flop will not be "safe" so just take the flip pre.

Ok thanks. I was hoping i won the hand. THere were a number of times i was the favorite in the hand and lost and battled back to my chip stack. And this would have been a great time to double up. I think back though and i know if i would have folded i could have made the final table and cashed...but i didnt. Oh well, i need to learn.

why don't you flat you have an M of what almost 17 you standard raise or maybe leverage an overbet but i just don't see anything but 2 coinflips and maybe one 4:1 favorite in his range (AK,AQ,10's) everything else we mostly lose our stack as 4:1 dogs or pick up the blinds when folded. I just don't see enough pocket pairs we beat calling off half their stack here, may that is just me, but at best we see 10's and 9's here sometimes that is it others we race or get crushed. Unless it seems like he is going to defend BB a lot, or you have been stealing his BB a lot, a standard raise wins the blinds just as much and gives us ways of not going broke here. I get the reasoning that if we push in on a possible coin flip and win we are more or less the chip leader but JJ 25 BB deep seems like too deep to open shove for me. The only thing that may back me like this move is if you feel you can't hold your own post flop against villain then shoving may be a decent option but i think we can take a flop and play accordingly from then on. I hate this push if most of the table is short because we just don't need to take risks against the big stack too much.

Don't do it. Like rrumsey said, you are most likely gonna get called by a 50/50 race. You are not in such a bad position that you are craving to steal the BB for all your chips. Just raise it up and be prepared to chip it all in if he comes over the top.

Standard online push.

Live however, happy with a raise to 2400, when re-popped we're moving in. Take a flip. Poker is a game of small edges. You win tournaments by winning races. GG.

what? what are we going to flat?

you mean raise smaller and then when he reraises just flat?
so you want to put in half our stack and then do what exactly?

i would definately go with a smaller raise, but if he comes over the top im not folding (or flatting) JJ. especially if we've seen him shove with hands like J8. it might be helpful to know the payout structure. with 10 tables i would guess FT pays, and with 2 tables left were really not in stack preservation mode. if we were 1 from the money we could *think* about folding, tho there its even more likely he's trying to just bully us and we should call.