Hand from today's tournament. I think average stack at this point was like 15k, I'm not exactly sure, I was definitely below average.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t400 (9 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx

SB (t31358)
BB (t23570)
UTG (t22590)
UTG+1 (t5233)
MP1 (t13565)
MP2 (t25140)
MP3 (t9117)
Hero (t12425)
Button (t31260)

Preflop: Hero is CO with J:heart:, J:club:.
5 folds

No real reads at this point, I knew the villain by reputation and knew that he was a strong player(I'm actually not positive on this, but pretty sure), but didn't know his style. He had been to my left for about 5 rounds, and I had raised from the CO 3 times and once from MP3.

What do I do?

I put him on a very strong hand. He is willing to raise you enough to nearly pot commit you, and 12k can still hurt him. Overall I think youre a small underdog to his range of TT+, AK at best and would fold to the reraise.

The only exception would be if it were someone with such a huge reputation (ala gigabet, johnnybax, gamblerab) that they think they can push anyone off a hand with a raise. Then Id add to their range to make you a small favorite and its a decision whether you want to risk the tourney here.

Meh, dunno why I put all the action in, that was fairly braindead of me.

Hopefully lots of people didn't see it before my edit :-)

Hmmm...was it there when i read it? i didnt pay any attention to it if so.

Yeah it was there, no biggie really but there was no reason for me to add it as it might influence some people.

I didn't think it influenced your reply.

Depends on if you want to gamble or not and Button's impression of you - from your raise from the CO, he could be thinking "steal" and loosen his raising range. If you put him on a looser range, then I could see pushing.

I actually had jacks in the FCP $40K Guarantee while I was reading your post. EP (Table leader) min-raises to 400, I just called in LP with jacks. Short stack goes all-in from the blinds. EP disconnects and is folded. It was another 2K to me (I had almost 8k left) so I called as I was thinking squeeze play. He had queens unfortunately so I took a hit to my stack.

Also, I recall Copernicus to my right in Thursday's Protege tourney and his last hand with the jacks.

Based on this small sample size, fold. :-)

If you raised in the CO 3 of the last 5 rounds, I'd say it's very probable that he's just pissed off and is playing back at you with something as weak as A-X. I'd probably either push now or else call and then C/R all in on any non-ace flop.

Alright well here's the whole hand:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t400 (9 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx

SB (t31358)
BB (t23570)
UTG (t22590)
UTG+1 (t5233)
MP1 (t13565)
MP2 (t25140)
MP3 (t9117)
Hero (t12425)
Button (t31260)

Preflop: Hero is CO with J:heart:, J:club:.
5 folds, Button calls t8700.

Flop: (t24975) T:spade:, 5:club:, 4:heart: (2 players)

Turn: (t24975) Q:spade: (2 players)

River: (t24975) 2:diamond: (2 players)

Final Pot: t24975

Results in white below:
Hero has Jh Jc (one pair, jacks).
Button has Ks Ac (high card, ace).
Outcome: Hero wins t24975.

Villain in this hand is ChipMovr, if I'm not mistaken he plays the 100/200 game on stars and has a pretty good record on thepokerdb.

This is actually an incredibly standard play for me, so it surprises me that copernicus is recommending folding and gobears is considering it, my thinking is definitely more along the lines of iggymcfly's. Calling and seeing a flop crossed my mind since he was pretty much pot committed, but a weak re-steal hand is probably folding and I don't want to give K5 a free flop, have to deal with a Q high flop, or give the hand up to 99 or TT because the board is scary.

I expect better players to be noticing that I'm raising a lot and to try to 'buy' their late position back from me at some point, so I play JJ like the nuts when I'm one of the shorter stacks 8)

I never would've even given this hand a second thought if it weren't for the fact that chipmovr called me out for being so willing to race in that spot. One player at the table strongly agreed with my play which seemed to piss him off a bit, he told me to 'find him later' to discuss the hand because he wasn't going to say anything else about it at the table.

Anyway thanks for the responses, this hand was definitely an eye-opener for me, I think I've been falling in love with pushing in these marginal spots too much.

Pushing upfront is a bit different than calling a reraise, since you have some folding equity against the big Aces thats lost when there is dead money in the pot, though that can get you in trouble too (the risk of only being called by hands that beat you and losing the market from hands you beat). I dont think youre short stacked enough to be in a push/fold situation.

Its a little strange he should jump on you for "racing" when he was the one who opened up the possibility of that confrontation with a hand that had a good chance to be behind.

Agreed, pushing up front would be more than a bit silly at that point.

I think his point was that he has fold equity when he re-raises, but I don't when I finally push. I definitely plan on asking him how he would have played it if I see him again.

We're definitely going to war with QQ, right? I don't see myself even considering letting that one go.

QQ moves you from a 57:43 underdog to a 52:48 favorite if hes got that 10+, AK range, so it puts you on the good side of a coin flip, but its still a coinflip. If you think theres even a small chance he's bluffing or that range is too tight its a pretty easy push.

I've played with Phil Laak before. He's a very good player and the resteal is certainly in his playbook. Given the conditions, I probably just call and check-raise any non-ace flop.

I'm surprised that he wanted to talk with you about this. If I had as much experience as he does, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get so worked up over a 55r tournament.

When Phil is trying, he's pretty dangerous. I've seen him fooling around from time to time, though.

That's Laak? Strange, from the way he was talking about the hand he made it seem like he plays a very conservative style.

You sure that's him?

If it is I'll definitely seek him out, would be nice to be able to pick his brain for a bit.

That's what I thought. I'm glancing through some search results on Google and I'm not so sure now. Does anybody else know?