Calling short stacks in tournament poker
Anyone who has ever played poker tournaments will be aware of the following situation. It has been folded to you on the button and you raise to steal the blinds. A short stack big blind shoves all in and now you are a little unsure as to what to do with your mediocre hand of J-10. I will go through a few rules of thumb here that you would do well to remember and it is basically to do with pot odds and your stack size. Let us look at an example and you have 40,000 in chips and you raise to 1200 with blinds of 200-400 and the short stack shoves all in for 1700 then this places 3500 in the pot and it is only 500 more to you to call.
Here you are getting 7/1 pot odds and the call is automatic. Your opponent could have AK and you must still call. As a rule of thumb then anytime that you are getting 3/1 or more and a short stack goes all in then you have a pretty automatic call. If you had raised to 1000 and your opponent shoved all in for 1700 then this puts 3300 into the pot with it being 700 to you to call which is still more than 4/1 and so once again the call is automatic. If your opponent shoved all in for 3000 then this would place 4600 into the pot and it is 2000 more to call if your raise was to 1000. These are odds of 2.3/1 and now the problem gets a little more complex.
If you have a hand like A-3 and there is a chance of domination then you can maybe fold here and it isn’t as straight forward as in the previous examples. However when the pot odds are in the 2/1 to 3/1 price range then you should still contemplate calling with hands that are not dominated as many players shove with small pocket pairs and aces. When the odds fall to less than 2/1 then you are basically using your judgment far more. So this means having knowledge of what your opponent may be doing.
If you think that your opponent is desperately pulling the trigger then you can maybe call with certain hands and fold others. Taking this to an extreme and you raise and your opponent shoves giving you calling odds of even money then you have no call here if your hand is a mere stealing hand. This is where it pays in Texas Hold em poker tournaments to try and ascertain what your opponents are likely to do and with what types of hands. This isn’t always possible if you have not been playing with certain players all that much. But what you need to do if at all possible is restrict the amount of counter play that your opponents have against you. But when you amass chips in tournaments then for once it is you that has the chips and not your opponents and so it will be you who will be faced with short stacks moving in on you.