$300 live tournament, 723 entrants, 81 players get in the money.  There are 90 players left, and we about 10 minutes into day 2 at a new table. Blinds are 1,200/2,400 with 400 ante, 9-handed. Relevant stack sizes are:

Hero – 70,600

Button – ~80 to 85,000

SB – 18,400

Action folds around to me in MP2, and I make it 5,200 with ATo. Button calls, SB looks at his cards and resignedly pushes AI after debating for a few seconds. He's an older guy and doesn't seem to be Hollywooding.

The pot is 34,800. It was at this point that I was unsure what to do.  Calling the additional 13,200 seems like a terrible idea. It either gives the button a chance to raise me out of the pot preflop or makes me see a flop out of position and possibly getting pushed off the best hand.  Raising to isolate seems tricky as well due to the stack sizes and the strength of my hand. A min raise would be 31,600 (45% of my stack), and raise/folding preflop is an even worse idea than calling the SB AI.  Raising AI also seems like a bad play because if we push and get called by the button, we're risking bubbling out of the tournament with ATo, which is definitely behind the button's calling range. Folding also appears bad since I know we're ahead of the SB's range (22+, A5+, JT+, the SB's stack is so small I think he may just be looking for a good spot to get it in and hope to get lucky, even with 67o).

Since it's a new table, I don't have any reads to go on. The only information I have so far is that the 4 or so hands that have already been played were pretty tight, with most preflop raises taking down the blinds and antes. No one seemed to want to get into a big pot.  My initial plan for the hand was to try and steal the blinds and antes and back off if I met any serious resistance.  The primary variable here is the button.  I ruled out premium hands like 99+ and AQ+ as I would assume I'd be getting 3-bet by such strong hands in position. However, in the back of my mind I considered that he could have smooth called a monster hoping for one of the blinds to jam (BB had ~40k), but realistically I think this would happen about 5-10% of the time. I also considered the hands a button would smooth call with in position. My guess would be small to med pairs (22-88, which I don't think would be a smart play in his position, but again, I don't know his play style), possibly suited connectors (depending on how loose a player he is), some broadway hands like KQ or QJ, and some Ax hands as well.

I determined that my two worst options were to call or raise small.  That left either folding or shoving. I eventually came to the conclusion that most of the time he was calling in position hoping to see a flop, and shoving would work 80% or more.  And even if I get called, I'm no worse that 70/30 (unless he has AA).

What do you guys think?