Tough decision with JJ in the SB

In keeping with my New Year's resolution, this is the first hand I'm posting here for dissection and analysis. I already posted in on 2p2, and there were of course other hands I could have chosen - busting with TPTK on a paired board to a LAG villain who happened to have an overpair; folding 99 in middle position to an UTG raiser, even though he and I were both deep enough for me to have implied odds if I hit a set, because there were two shorter stacks behind that, if they shoved, would squeeze me between them and the raiser (yes, I actually made a decision based on the stack sizes of players yet to act, a fairly new phenomenon for me). Ultimately I picked this hand because A) I made a completely different decision than I would have 6 months ago and B) there is no way to know for sure if my play was "right" or "wrong" due to the outcome.

Situation: PokerStars Night $70K guarenteed, a $50 + $5 buy in tournament. This is above my normal buy-in and bankroll, but I was bored. Not that this is an excuse.

Blinds are 500/1000/100 at a full table (9 players). I have a stack of 33.6K (M of about 14) in the SB. We are just past the bubble, if memory serves.

UTG makes it 2550, a normal raise for this table, two folds, and MP1 makes it 9000. Both UTG and MP1 have me covered, but neither by very much. It folds to me in the small blind, where I'm holding JJ.

In the past, I would probably would have made one of two plays: flat or shove. Flatting is absolutely inexcusable given stack sizes and tournament situation. Shoving is certainly a viable play, but is pretty high variance - if one of the villains calls, I'm almost always crushed under an overpair or flipping vs AK or AQs. TT might call some fraction of the time, but not often unless villain is pretty loose. If both villains call, I'm almost certainly crushed by one villain, possibly both, or sometimes flipping against both. Again, occassionally there may be a loose call from TT or slightly lower, but not very often.

On the other side, if UTG raised with a "weak" ace like AJs, and if MP1 was raising with something like 88 or 99, I could fold out both villains with a shove and pick up a substantial pot for my stack size.

So what did I know about both villains? UTG seemed standard, for lack of a better term - he had not been particularly aggressive, so I would certainly expect him to have a tight range to raise UTG. Still, if he was the only villain in the hand, I would most likely be playing the hand (most likely with a raise, since I would be OOP for the rest of the hand, and because JJ is difficult to play post flop when overcards hit). MP1, on the other hand, had been playing what I would call a fairly weak/passive game. He had been limping and flatting a lot, but rarely raising pre. So for him to raise an UTG raiser suggests to me a very narrow range - QQ+, AK.

It's possible, of course, that my reads were off. It's possible that UTG had ATs, and MP1 had 99, and that they both either would have folded to a shove, or, if they had called, would have been calling as a substantial underdog to my JJ. However, based on my reads of the villains, I opted to fold JJ here.

This isn't a play I would have made in the past. I both hate JJ and love it. It's a premium pair, but not quite premium enough. Odds are good you have the best hand pre, but often not after the flop or by the river. And it's not a hand you can really justify set mining with, which makes flatting with it pre kind of gross.

Of my three choices in this particular hand (flat, shove, or fold), I eliminated flat (horrible with current stack sizes) and shove (due to specific villain reads), leaving me with a very rare preflop fold with JJ.

Results: The BB and UTG folded, leaving MP1 with the pot. No cards were shown.

I posted this hand because it represents a substantial change from the way I would have played the hand in the past, and in this case I believe it was for the better. Shoving with the hope of generating a fold from two villains showing strength doesn't seem like a good play, although folding JJ with an M of only 14 is certainly not my default move. All in all, I'm comfortable with the way I played it, but I understand the argument for shoving.

Anyway, good luck to one and all, and see you at the tables.

SGT RJ