DECISION POINT: You are in the middle stages of a live daily tournament with blinds at 500/1,000 and a 1,000 big blind ante. You are one of the shorter stacks at the table with 17,000 chips and approximately 50% of the field remains. The action folds to you in Middle Position and you raise first-in to 2,000 with 8♥8♦. The Cutoff calls, the Button moves all-in for 20,000, and action folds back to you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are in the middle stages of a live daily tournament. Around 50% of the field remains, so we still have quite a way to go to the money. The blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante and we are one of the shorter stacks at our table having 17,000 chips to start the hand. We are dealt 8h8d in MP2 and raise first-in to 2,000 chips and the Hijack folds. The Cutoff calls and then the Button moves all-in for 20,000 chips and everyone folds back to us.

In this spot, being able to estimate our opponent’s range appropriately is of the utmost importance. If our opponent is well versed in awkward stack play, they should be moving all-in here with a lot of pairs, suited Ax hands, some offsuit Aces as low as AJ, plus several of suited broadway hands.

If the Cutoff uses an appropriate range, our pocket eights are way too far ahead of many of the smaller suited Ax combinations and smaller pairs to justify folding. When our opponent is on the tighter side and removes more of the Axs and smaller pair hands that we dominate from their range, our hand has less equity versus their all-in in this scenario. If we think the Cutoff is not capable of moving all-in with hands such as 66/77 or A5s, we could start to consider an exploitative fold as an option.

As a default, we should always assume that our opponent plays a reasonable strategy until proven otherwise, so absent any additional opponent specific information this is a fairly clear call.

Calling the all-in is the best play.