DECISION POINT: You are seven-handed in a fast paced daily tournament with blinds at 4,000/8,000 and an 8,000 big blind ante. You are the shortest stack with most of your opponents having 3x the amount of chips. The Hijack raises to 32,000 and it folds around to you in the Big Blind with J♠T♥ and 92,000 behind.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing in a fast paced, daily live tournament and are in the middle stages with blinds of 4,000/8,000 and an 8,000 big blind ante. We have 100,000 chips to start the hand before posting the big blind, and are by far the shortest stack at the table with most other players having at least three times as many chips. We are dealt JsTh in the Big Blind and it is folded to the Hijack who opens to 32,000.

This is a much larger than normal raise for the middle stages of a tournament. At this stage the standard raise size is often between 2-3x the big blind, and more often than not averages closer to 2x. Everyone else folds and action is on us.

If the raise size was smaller this is certainly a spot we could take a flop getting favorable pot odds and take a low risk opportunity with a hand that flops reasonably well. Given the 4BB raise we’re not getting that great of pot odds (exactly 2:1) and we will have to invest a large portion of the remaining stack with a hand that will miss the flop around two-thirds of the time. Our specific hand doesn’t figure to be a significant favorite over any reasonable range that the Hijack would be opening using this larger raise size.

Some players may find a Stop and Go appealing here. The Stop and Go is a short stack play that involves calling preflop, then shoving all-in on all flops in an attempt to generate fold equity.

This play is particularly effective against hands like weak aces and small pairs that aren’t likely to fold to a raise preflop but may fold on some scary flops. Given the 10 big blind effective range in this hand a Stop and Go may seem appropriate, however this spot is less than ideal since the Hijack’s range should be tighter than normal with their larger raise size.

It can be frustrating when you are short stacked to finally look down and see a decent hand in the Big Blind and have to fold.

Emotions aside, when our hand doesn’t figure to be ahead of the Hijack’s range and there isn’t a reasonable way to generate much fold equity preflop or postflop, our best course of action is to just fold and look for a better spot.

Folding is the best play.