DECISION POINT: You are in the middle stages of a local daily tournament with blinds at 500/1,000 and a 1,000 big blind ante. Stacks at your table range between 30BBs-60BBs, however you and the player on the Button are two of the shorter stacks with around 20BBs. Action folds to the Button, who is a solid player and understands how to play position, and they min-raise to 2,000. With A♥T♥ in the Small Blind what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing a daily tournament at a local casino in the middle stages with roughly 50% of the field remaining. We are among the shorter stacks with around 20 big blinds with most of the other players having between 30-60BBs. The Button is a solid and aggressive player who understands position.

The blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante and we are dealt AT suited in the Small Blind. Everyone folds around to the Button who opens to 2,000 and action is on us. When playing in a tournament we should be constantly evaluating our stack size and thinking about the kinds of tools that are available to us at each specific stack size. With an awkward stack (between 12BBs and 25BBs) one of the best tools in our arsenal is to shove all-in when facing a standard raise size and we have fold equity, often called a reshove.

Moving all-in for 20BBs into a 4.5BB pot represents an increase of nearly 25% to our stack when both the Big Blind and original raiser on the Button fold. Any time we can potentially increase our stack by at least 15% by winning the money already in the pot, it becomes a compelling situation to just start moving all-in with a range that includes value hands and some semi-bluffs.

Many players worry that they are putting their “tournament life” on the line too loosely with this approach, however when used in the correct situations this play will often cause our opponents to be facing a decision for their stack with a wide range.

Flat calling this raise in the Small Blind is a common leak for many players, as hands like ATs feel strong enough to continue but potentially too vulnerable to raise. The problem with this approach is that calling represents a significant portion of our stack and our opponent has a very wide range. We will miss the flop around two thirds of the time.

The Button is likely to continuation bet in this scenario on a variety of board textures, and we may be forced to fold the best hand on specific flops against hands in the Button’s range that would likely fold to a preflop all-in but also have significant equity against us such as Q9s or 87s. This passive preflop approach is especially bad when we are awkward stacked, as our stack starts to dwindle significantly after only a few missed flops.

In this particular case, AT suited is well ahead of the Button’s range and moving all-in purely because of our hand strength makes a lot of sense. It is important to maintain a balanced reshoving range that includes both value hands such as our ATs and also some semi-bluffing combinations such as A8o, 22, and JTs.

Moving all-in is the best play.