DECISION POINT: In a Tournament, a Short Stack moves all-in from the Hijack seat. The Small Blind, who has you covered, calls. You are in the Big Blind with T9 suited, what do you do?

PRO ANSWER: Whenever we consider calling an all-in, we want to understand the pot odds we are getting and estimate whether or not our hand has enough equity against our opponent hand ranges to call.

In this case, there is around 12,000 in the pot and it costs us around 4,000 to call, meaning we are getting around 3 to 1 pot odds. We would need to realize a minimum of 25% equity in order to consider calling given those odds (75-25 is the equivalent of 3-1).

Since the all-in player moved in from the Hijack seat with only 5 big blinds, we can expect their hand range to be very wide, often 40% of all hands or more. The Small Blind should be calling with a wide range as well. This means we likely have over 30% equity in this pot.

The fact that we are closing the action preflop guarantees that will see the flop if we choose to call. In addition, since there will be a dry side pot postflop and we have position on the Small Blind, we are even more likely to realize the equity of our hand.

Calling is profitable in this spot given all these factors, therefore we shouldn’t fold. Raising might be an option, but isn’t the best use of our chips since it would be a significant portion of our stack.

Calling is the best play.