This might be painfully obvious to some people but its always good to hear different points of views...

In a SnG tournament, 5 players left, blinds at 50/100 I am in the BB with about 2300 chips from 2k start. The table short stack with 1100 goes all in from the cut off for his remaining 1100 in chips. I look down and find 99.

My question is, is this an automatic call? He is definately looking to double up and the hand range is very wide but I just wonder if the reward of 1k chips is worth the risk of becoming short stacked (10 BBs ish).

Unless the player is the biggest rock in the history of poker... this is an automatic call. You gotta win all the chips to win a tournament.

That's not automatic imo. I'd more often make that call than not, but it's still half your chips. The thing I hate about low pocket pair is that your opponent can make a donkey move, like move all in with Q10/ J10/QJ to steal the blinds, and it's still a coin flip for low pocket pair. If you feel the blinds are getting too big for your stack, then you need to make this call. If there's a lot of cheap poker yet to play, you might want to pick a better spot.

With that stack going all in with an uncalled pot with ANY hand (he would do it blind) is automatic, and QT/JT/QJ are far from donkey moves, they are premium hands.

Nevertheless, 9s are the 11th best hand 5 handed and you cant lay down to an automatic all in with 158 worse hands that he could have.

im going to take my chances here and call, i can't see somebody playing any higher pairs that fast. He's likely got low pockets.

I'd call.

This is a call, and as far as Q-10/J-10/Q-J being premium hands go I would say thats a little farfetched. They are drawing hands, and thats it. Would you call an all in bet the first hand of a tournament with these hands? No. Then, they are not premium hands. That being said, I would not call those donkey moves, I just call them time to take coinflip moves, and hope my drawing hands draw.

They are premium hands in the context of the situation..ie that you would go all in with any 2 cards including 72o. They are top 30% hands, which makes them premium when your range is the full 100%.

When the table has become short-handed, you see many a player become afraid to see a flop with a medium-strong hand (ie. pocket queens down to pocket 5's), so they push em all in, as they do not want to make any tough decisions.

Folding leaves you at 2200 chips.
Calling and winning puts you at 3300 chips.
Calling and losing puts you at 1000 chips.

The worst case scenario is that you will be left with 1000 chips, 10 X the current big blinds, which IMO still leaves you with plenty of room to maneuver.

I do not believe there is an incorrect answer to this question. 8)