$10 180-man SNG. Top 18 get paid, we're down to ~26. Average chipstack is around $10,000. Villain is new to the table, but sharkscope shows that he is a break-even player in $10-$20 SNGs (over 700 games).

$50 antes, blind goes up in 5 minutes

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t600 (7 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: FlopTurnRiver)

SB (t6507)
BB (t5485)
Hero (t8675)
MP1 (t17192)
MP2 (t14070)
CO (t7785)
Button (t9265)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with T, T.
Hero raises to t2000, 4 folds, SB raises to t6457, 1 fold, Hero calls t4457.

Flop: (t13164) 3, 5, 9 (2 players)

Turn: (t13164) 2 (2 players)

River: (t13164) 4 (2 players)

Final Pot: t13164

Results in white below:
SB has Ah Jd (straight, five high).
Hero has Tc Th (one pair, tens).
Outcome: SB wins t13164.

1st: Should I have raised to $1800 instead of $2000 preflop? I picked $2000 to compensate for the antes, but it left me with ~ 10bbs and we still had 10 to go until the money so I felt obligated to call

2nd: Should I have made the call? I make a strong raise UTG at a near full table, so villain should put me on a strong hand... With this in mind, should I lay down TT?

depends if you were looking for a race type situation that early on in the tournament. a couple things come to mind when i am forced to make this decision early on in any tournament. By the way these are my personal opinions which have helped me take down some tourneys.

1. IMO 7 handed isnt close enough to the bubble for TT to be considered a large raise/push hand. When it get down to five and SOMETIMES 6, i would plat TT that strong.

2. Consider the type of opponent you are up against, size up his stack in relation to your own, understand what equity your opponent has.
IMO once again i would have to agree with you about throwing out a raise, you have position on him if he only decides to call, and you might be able to take down the pot preflop. (which is never bad) The only problem i have is the amount of the raise. throwing out 2000 chip bet is only committing the SB to a push/fold situation preflop, and once again TT IMO isnt that strong seven handed. (plus he could be playing A10 or some garbage like that) i would have committed maybe 1000 to 1200 bet preflop. This brings me to my next point had the SB decided to push after a 1k bet.

3. The speed at which the SB pushes. Some people on this forum may feel that the speed of bets online is irrelevant to the game, and they are entitled to their opinions, but i have found that finding patterns in the length of betting has helped me exponentially. If you can remember, how fast did he shove the rest of his chips? Anything inside of 2 seconds indicates to me, (once again my opinion) that his hand may consist of ak-aj kq, jj. normally along those lines, and of course they can sometimes have 88 66 ect. but that is the beauty variance right? (haha) But normally i happen to find the above hands are normally what they will push with. so really it comes down to whether or not you want to race that early on in the tourney, and if you dont you only risk 1/5 of your stack. (supposing you bet 1k or around their)

It would also help me to know the blinds? maybe the SB style of play if you can remember. Even so you raced with him, and he caught a lucky card, im just trying to give you an idea of an alternative to pushing so early on in the tourney. hope some of this rambling help feint!

__________________
AsuitedKing: justify the call
EhRa: he hits his set und waited that i hitz something and he dindt play he only goes allin
EhRa: tahts a big donk ... so ****

even MORE important, did you make the money?

__________________
AsuitedKing: justify the call
EhRa: he hits his set und waited that i hitz something and he dindt play he only goes allin
EhRa: tahts a big donk ... so ****

this isn't a single table SNG, its a 180man sng. top 18 get paid, we were down to ~26 people at this point

nope, 23rd... Lost this hand, pushed with 44 a couple hands later -- ended up chopping the pot and made $200. Then open-pushed 88 and ran into JJ...

The big blind is $600, so a $1000 bet isn't possible. $1800 is the standard 3bb raise, but there are $50 antes at this point so I bet just a bit more.

Villain took time -- about 30 seconds.

my bad about the blind, i wasnt paying attention to the top very much. so in that case id prolly do a min raise just to see where he's at.

i dunno about the 30 seconds, id prolly push just like you considering he took that much time, but you dont want to commit a third of his stack unless you are willing to push him in on the flop or if he reraises.

given the circumstances, and how far away from the money you were, i would call his all in raise too. you have to take some shots when the blinds are that high. well in my opinion.

nice job regaurdless man, it takes some skill to make that far down.

__________________
AsuitedKing: justify the call
EhRa: he hits his set und waited that i hitz something and he dindt play he only goes allin
EhRa: tahts a big donk ... so ****