First for referance I'm a true and true newbie. Playing about a month online, but I'm picking it up fairly quickly, my math and strategic background is helping I think.

Here's the position I was in last night, and it ended up killing me. Just need to know what I did wrong. If I got too aggressive, played poorly, or if I'm just plain slow. I can't get the converter to work with my history, so I'll sum it up.

Satellite MTT, Top two seats advance. I'm currently 7th of about 13 left, and really am trying to build my stack going to the final table or I know I'm in trouble.

First Hand:
1k ante 10k/20k blinds
I pocket:
Opponent pushes all in: 13k
I call and reraise to push to show down.
Result: Opp shows two pair 4's in pocket and 2's on board -7576 to me

Second Hand:
1k ante 10k/20k blinds
I pocket:
Opponent pushes all in preflop: 33.8k
I call to goto showdown.
Result: Opp shows pockets 9's and walks with the pot, -54,864 for me

Third Hand:
1k anter 10k/20k blinds
I pocket: On the BB
Opponent goes all in preflop: 24.5k
I call: 4.5k to go showdown
Result: He shows KT and draws a king on the board, -25,500 for me

Should I have just been walking on these hands and letting them steal the blinds? Did I seriously underestimate the power of middle pair this late in the game? Or did I just make stupid rookie mistakes?

Hello, my fourpenneth,

Late in MTTs (and indeed any time) there's a big difference betwen going allin and calling an allin.

Setting aside the bluffs and the nutters (and you may be able to peg these), someone who pushes is likely to have eiter AK AQ AJ AT Ax or a pocket pair with the odd KQ

AT is only dominating Ax, is less than 50/50 V the pocket pairs less than TT is in bad shape V JJ,QQ,KK and AA and is a major dog to AK, AQ and AJ.

That's not to say that you can't win calling with AT, but in the long haul it's not going to be a hand to call allins preflop with at a table with more than three or four people (short stack situations aside).

(Though the first one you mention seemed to be a push from a very short stack so was a much sounder move)

Sorry, just read your hands in more detail (I've got a b*stad migraine atm and am struggling).

The third hand is a call with any two cards for 4.5k ATs is an absolute lock to call.

The second hand may be debatable given your read on the guy but isn't a huge problem given the stack sizes.