AK for an ALL IN early in tourney vs short stack

[cnguyen2955]

Say you have 1,500 the starting amount of chips. Short stack, under 650 goes all in pre-flop. And you know they are a loose player who might have AQ/AK/AJs/low-mid pair and might raise smaller with an AA/KK/QQ/JJ... would you call all-in with AK?

Or just in any situation where someone shorter stacked then you goes all in preflop and you have AK... I get conflicting sources as obviously if you have a read you'd call if they had AQ, but if you know they have pocket 10's or so why risk it right? Or should you take that 45% odds to hugely double up and eliminate, and risk losing but not too badly enough to do a huge chip damage?

[sdplayerb]

One thing is a lot depends on the blinds.
If it is 25/50, i have to give him credit for a pocket pair. And i'm not risking that much of my stack on a coinflip where I have a good stack.

I don't really care about knocking people out until late in the tournament, and i'm not risking a huge amount of my stack to do so.

If the blinds are 50/100, his making this move with AQ or AJ does not make him a loose player. At this point I am calling as he could have a much greater range of hands.

[fnord_too]

By and large, I don't like calling an all in (or calling all in) with AK. The real value of AK is greatly reduced pre flop if you are not the aggressor and loose the opportunity to win the pot right there. The only times I do this are:
A. I'm desperate and really need to double up
B. The other person is desperate, and can have anything (and probably cannot hurt me too much if I lose)
C. I can survive loosing the hand and am getting good odds on my call. (i.e. it is a positive EV play that isn't castastophic if I lose the hand).

At best you have a sketchy case C. I think mucking is the right play here (assuming you are early in the tournament and your 1500 TC isn't a pittance at this point, in which case you are in case A.)

Oh, there is another case where I would consider a call. If this is a loose player and you are in a rebuy stage and are willing to rebuy, then this is not a bad call (or push if there are people to act behind you), though laying it down in this case is fine too IMO.