Making the All-in Call with the Short Stack
It’s safe to say that everyone loves having the big stack at their table when they are in a tournament. Having the big stack allows you to push other people around on the table with big bets and raises without fear of busting out. On the opposite end of the spectrum is having the short stack where you are in constant fear of going out on any play. Nobody likes to be in this position since you don’t have much room to maneuver around in a tournament with a short stack. But it’s something that happens at some point in every tourney so it must be dealt with.
And the best way to deal with a short stack situation is to try and double up by making an all-in call. The best opportunity for going all-in against a bigger stack arises when you actually have some decent cards to make such a call. For instance, having a premium hand like J-J or higher definitely warrants calling a bigger stack since your odds for winning won’t get much better than this. In some cases, you may even want to call with something like 9-10. or J-T if your stack is really hurting.
Of course good cards don’t always come your way during these times so you’ll have to use required odds sometimes. Required odds are basically the times when you get correct odds to call with a short stack - normally 2-to-1 or better. How this works is if you can put your opponent on a certain range and give yourself 2-to-1 odds then you have to be making the call. So if you put your opponent around A-K and you have J-T then you should be calling since you have almost a 40% chance of beating your opponent. This fits into the 2-to-1 odds so you should definitely call!