Yesterday we were 6 or 7 off the money bubble and I picked up JJ in early position. I timed down but decide to save 20 seconds of my time bank and folded it. I only had 10 big blinds and one of the shortest stacks at the table, so I was clearly at risk of busting if I shoved all-in and got called.
A few seconds later we got the alert that "we're now in the money!" and I felt pretty awful that I didn't use my entire time bank. At that point I could have shoved, and even if I lost the hand, I still would have cashed.
But the reason I folded is because it was an $11 tournament with a very unusual payout structure - the minimum cash was $40, far more than just a "min cash". This was the brand new Sunday Squeeze on ACR, which was a $100K Guaranteed tournament, surprisingly the turnout for it was incredibly light, they only got about 4100 entries total (so they guaranteed 100K but only received 41K in buy-ins, meaning there was a MASSIVE overlay of almost 60K).
So the reason I folded the 4th best hand was solely because the payout for cashing was enormous compared to the buy-in... and that influenced my decision greatly. Even tho JJ is the 4th best possible starting hand, it is quite vulnerable when facing any ace, king or queen. It really wasn't a difficult decision to fold it there, on the stone cold bubble, but my only mistake was not using up ALL of my time bank before folding. I learned a lesson there.
