Let's Play A Hand

I haven't done this in a while, so lets play! I'll cross post this on Pokerology also and use the replayer for the hand.

Full Tilt Poker Game #22520112225: $24 + $2 Rush Tournament (173904071), Table 21 - 30/60 - No Limit Hold'em - 21:10:48 ET - 2010/07/22
Seat 1: Michael Craig (8,380)
Seat 2: Hero (3,010)
Seat 3: Junior Augusto (5,200)
Seat 4: TourneRunr (5,750)
Seat 5: ballajr (3,680)
Seat 6: muligatani (1,560)
Seat 7: fengschu (4,990)
Seat 8: jba1986 (3,370)
Seat 9: pokerehdingys (2,420)
Hero posts the small blind of 30
Junior Augusto posts the big blind of 60
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [9d 9c]
TourneRunr folds
ballajr folds
muligatani has 8 seconds left to act
muligatani folds
fengschu folds
jba1986 raises to 210
pokerehdingys folds
Michael Craig folds
Hero has 15 seconds left to act
Hero raises to 600
Junior Augusto folds
jba1986 has 15 seconds left to act
jba1986 raises to 3,370, and is all in
Hero has 15 seconds left to act
Hero folds
Uncalled bet of 2,770 returned to jba1986
jba1986 mucks
jba1986 wins the pot (1,260)

OK, as you see I ended up making a very rare 3-bet/fold move in this Rush MTT. This is how I feel about how it went down.

First, the villain pot-raises from the hijack to 210. Since its a Rush game, I have no read on the raise size. Often its a strong hand but not an absolute monster like AA. Sometimes players just hit the pot button every time they raise. We don't know.

I have 99 in the SB and elect to reraise to 600. To be honest, I'm just now noticing that I actually bet a little less than I usually would OOP... I would have thought I'd go 650-700 here normally. Regardless, I'm always reraising 99 against a hijack raise as a standard move and 600 is likely enough to get the message across.

Ah, but now he shoves all-in! Ooops. Now what? As you saw, I elected to fold since I felt 99 wouldn't win often enough against a 4-bet/shove range. I would need to win about 40% of the time here given the pot odds presented (pot was 3670, 2410 to call if I see it right) and unless this guy has 88 or AJ in his shove range, I don't have it. I don't think he does often enough at all, so I fold.

What's the problem you ask? I'm wondering if I just turned my hand into a bluff. If I'm going to be 3-bet folding in this spot do my cards really matter that much? I don't think so. I could have taken a hand outside of my reraising/calling range with a little flexability like T9o and done the same thing.

So what could I have done better here? Well, it seems I didn't plan ahead enough. Granted, its a Rush MTT and it wasn't the only game I was playing at the time, but I do look at stacks sizes. I should have seen that by reraising here I was leaving him a great spot to reshove on me as a re-resteal. Now this guy might not be able to pull that off but the spot is still going to give me fits (obviously).

This leaves me to believe that due to the stack sizes involved here, reraise/fold is just not smart here. That leaves 4 other options: fold, shove, call, or 3-bet/call a shove. We are just too strong to fold, that's out. Shove, while perhaps Nash-friendly and/or coupled with fold equity a potentially viable play, seems really spewy this deep... you tell me. So that leaves call and 3-bet/call.

Calling is reasonable to me. Generally I'll be playing fit or fold with my 99 like I would have with 33, either I hit a set or I'm done with the hand. The odds are there to set-mine so that's not an issue. I think this is the best option unless I decide that 99 is too strong to fold to that 3-bet, which leads us to that last option. Is 99 strong enough to go all the way here?

I'm thinking a stock 4-bet/shove range might be something like TT+/AK, but I gotta wonder if other hands just don't show up enough here to make 99 a call. Are guys really coming over the top of me with 66? AJ? KQs? Are they actually tighter (JJ+) or a combination of this? How wide does he think I am here? That would change his range also. I could be going 77+/AJ+ here... what would he go with against that type of range? Is 99 or AQ in there? If so, I still think I'm behind... but is bullshit in his range enough to change that?

If we had 1500 here I'd shove easily and just take my chances. Being this deep changes things. What do you think?