Final 5. 3rd place with AJs in the small blind

Play to win ... ALWAYS ... call!
nice hand

Thanks man. Ya I made that call off with the idea that my AJs had good equity vs a wide range including some weaker hands. If I double there I move to 2nd in chips.

I have played spots in the past where I'm focusing on laddering up. Sometimes you can hold onto that 3rd spot, but other times, you can get grinded down as well and possibly end up in 5th.

I started the final table 7th out of 9th, so I'm not sure if that affected my mindset in that a top 3 finish wasn't expected of me anyways. I was also multitabling like 6 games at one time, so my focus probably wasn't as high as it should be.

I need to start dropping off games if I'm running deep in MTTs for a final table.

Call is fine. BB should be shoving worse.

I don't think "play to win" is broadly applicable advice, but your hand is strong enough to dominate many hands in his shoving range, which will include a lot of Ax and perhaps some worse jacks (maybe KJo, maybe JTs-KJs).

If you want to play it lower-variance and try to outlast the other two shorter stacks before making moves, then open shove yourself. His calling range will be tighter, but it'll also be less likely to have two live cards, and you'll probably still have some dominated hands in there-- I would be surprised if he folded A8s or ATo, for example. (But he might fold some of the Broadway-type hands like KQo or QTs he may just shove over your limp, that are still more live than you'd prefer them to be at this stage of the tournament.)

Yes my locker room Howard Dean moment there was not appropriate for our GTO Mathematical classroom setting... my bad!

Thanks for your input Nath. Yes, your play suggestion of open shoving from the SB seems like the play that best discourages the BB from shoving.

I didn't state what my intention was when I did my open limp from the SB. My intention was to limp, with the expectation that BB would raise 2x, 2.5x or 3x. I would then rejam my 17BB stack with the hopes of taking down the pot right there. What is your feedback on that play or thought process?

Once he did his all in jam to my limp, it was unexpected. This was my first ever mystery bounty, but I am guessing that the average bounty at that point in the tournament was only about $12, which would be fairly negligible when making decisions, given that pay bumps were fairly big at that stage.

Hmm. I think that play is probably generally fine, although BB's raise/call range might not be that great for you-- but if they bluff-raise a lot. Even factoring the chances of a shove, a shove range is probably good for you because it's more likely to be hands with poor postflop playability that figure to be best, like some of the worst Ax hands and small pairs.

I'm not sure how the bounties might change BB's approach. In theory, if the bounties are that small relative to the pay jumps, then you're right that the approach shouldn't change, but in a $5 your opponents may not be paying attention to the actual bounty size.

I am surprised BB just jammed a hand as strong as that. I guess they had a lot of worry about overcards, but even at a final table for 17BB I think it's easily strong enough to just raise/call.

I think a lot in a $5 depends on how your opponents play. I think in theory all of your reasoning is correct. I really doubt a lot of $5 players are playing GTO-optimal though, so some observation as to how they might approach these spots certainly helps. (I know that's difficult in such a small sample size, and falling back to theoretically optimal there is fine.)