Depending on what they mean by middle position, opening JTo could be reasonable or very loose. UTG+2 is often called MP and I think even UTG+3 would be borderline. Three players can still take position on you, and JT is in pretty rough shape vs. any reasonable flatting range. I think it’s fine, but marginal opens like this add more variance to your strategy, which becomes less desirable as ICM pressure increases. With a stack of ~50-60bb, I think I’d be folding JTo before the HJ unless at least two of the following are true:

– BTN is nitty

– one of the blinds is fishy

– the players left to act don’t 3bet very often

– we cover everyone behind us and no more than one player has <=25bb

I like a c-bet if we’re heads up but it’s pretty questionable OOP in a 3-way pot. There are some decent value targets but we’re never looking to play a large pot unless we make our straight on a non-spade. Although protecting our hand has value on similar boards, a lot of the overcard hands that we’d like to fold out have gutshots on J98 and, regardless, the value of protection really pales in comparison to pot control when we’ve got a marginal top pair + an OESD that can’t make the nuts. I strongly prefer a check-call and would probably fold if there was a bet and raise after I checked.

As played, we’re obviously never folding to the small flop raise. I think the turn is close but probably a check/fold. The main problem I see is that 1-card straights offer little in the way of implied odds.

If I’m reading the hand right, we’re facing a bet of 275k into a pot of ~500k. We’d need 26.2% equity to justify a call based on chipEV, but I’d want to add at least some risk premium at this stage of the tournament. If we’re looking for 30% equity, we need to beat a significant portion of the villain’s range without making our straight, and that doesn’t seem very realistic when we also need to consider reverse implied odds and the prospect of occasionally folding the best hand to a river bet.