The A4 discussion is a good one, and I see both sides of it.

To be honest, I almost threw it away myself, and felt uneasy raising it, but I hated the thought of taking the blinds and being reduced to under 15k, and then facing perhaps another 7 hands of junk (or mediocre hands facing raises in front of them).

I am still not sure if I did the right thing or not. Part of me thinks the A4 was correct, part of me thinks it was incorrect, and part of me thinks it's really marginal where it could have gone either way.

The one thing I have to disagree with here, however, are the people who are telling me to "not let myself get to an M<5 situation in the first place".

Easier said than done.

You are probably incorrectly picturing me being the only 40-year-old at the table, full of a bunch of aggro internet kids who are raping the blinds while I wait for premium hands.

That's not at all the scenario I faced at any of my tables.

I was actually younger than average, and most of the players tended to really have it when they raised. I'm not saying that they always had premium hands, but there was very little junk-ante-and-blind stealing going on, except in the obvious spots from late position. In addition, everyone was pretty call-happy. I would see this scenario unfold fairly often at this stage of the tournament:

Middle position raises.

SB with a short-middle stack shoves all in.

Middle position calls.

Middle position turns over QK and SB turns over 33.

Then the board runs out, and one of these two finds themselves with a fairly big pot.

I hate both of these plays (the 33 shove and the QK call) for obvious reasons.

But I see it again and again, and I remind myself that shoving junk over on people's preflop raises will tend to get you a call much more often than you'd expect.

At the same time, people didn't call as light if they hadn't entered the pot yet. That's why I felt the A4 had a fair chance of stealing from UTG.

Anyway, if I'm finding myself with junk after junk and am seeing early and middle position raises in front of me, no, I'm not wasting my chips playing back at them with shit, unless I'm getting the feeling that they are stealing blinds too often. With most of these recreational and semi-recreational players in these fields, that isn't typically happening.

I also don't believe I have a nitty table image. I think the image I project is right in the middle between loose and nitty.