I didn't read this entire thread, so I don't know if anyone has commented on this yet, but I can tell you exactly why you get called most of the time going all-in with a short stack. It's because of the large quantity of bad players on Party who buy in with $5 at a time and go all in the first time they see a marginal hand... like Ax suited, or any two face cards, or sometimes just about anything. They buy in for $5, go all in, get called and lose, then buy back in and repeat. I've seen guys sit at tables and do this over & over wasting $25-40 before they leave. I have no idea what they're after... it's just like this strategy but instead they play absolute crap, and go all in at the drop of a hat. Basically if they play a pot, they'll be all in before or on the flop every time. These players have created an illusion at Party that every player with < $10 going all in has a weak hand.

Case in point: yesterday I'm at a table with AJ suited. A guy with $4.50 left goes all in, one guy calls and I call. Ordinarily based just on the bet amount I'd assume he had aces, kings, or queens, and fold it; but it's the magical all-in. The flop comes with an ace on it, I bet, and the other monkey now goes all-in for like $5. So I call that. He types in the chat box: "Let's gamble." All the cards come out and I win, and respond "Yes, let's." What did our pair of simians have? The first guy had A8o. The second guy had 69o (and there was neither a six or a nine on the flop).

Players like these are why strategies like this work. Because guys like me - fairly profitable, intelligent players - see the short stack all-in as a sign of a weak hand masquering as strength. And at least 80% of the time, that's a correct judgement call. I'll gladly pay off anyone using this tactic 20% of the time so I can give myself great odds to win the other 80%. And of course that's assuming I don't pick up on what you're doing first. If you sit and play normally for an hour and THEN go all-in, I'm not likely to call you. It's usually not that hard to figure out which ones are the monkeys. Then again, I don't multi-table that much, so I might be paying more attention than most of the other players.