You’re probably going to be short-stacked in every poker tournament you play, which makes short-stacked skills a must for every player to acquire. The first, and most obvious concept about playing a short stack is that it requires patience and discipline to wait for the right situation in order to try to double through an opponent and get back in the poker tournament.
- Poker Tournament Shove Chart
- Check Shove Poker
- Shove Chart Poker
- Short Stack Poker Strategy
- Snap Shove Poker
Short stacked play means you need to get your money all-in with a big pair or big connectors and hope to win by making top pair with a strong kicker. Don’t Limp-in if You’re Short Stacked. If you are a short stack, you’ll need to avoid the temptation to limp-in and hope to catch part of the flop inexpensively. Mar 13, 2016 Stack Sizes. Pay attention to the stack sizes of those remaining in the SNG; Big stacks call wider vs short-stacked shoves; fish call wider as well; The bigger your stack in relation to theirs, the more pressure your shove puts on them; Short stacks are much more likely to call than big stacks.
Assessing the Situation
When you find your stack shrinking, the first thing you need to do is to assess the situation by gathering a few facts that will put your short stack into some perspective. Just answer these few questions:
- How big is your chip stack compared to others at your table?
- How big is your chip stack compared to the size of the blinds?
- How big is your chip stack compared to the average stack?
- How many hands can you look at before you bleed to death or else have so few chips in hand that even when you do go all-in, you’re bound to be called by someone?
Consider yourself short stacked whenever you have between 10 and 20 big blinds in front of you. When you have fewer than 10 big blinds, you have no option to make plays except for folding or pushing all-in. You shouldn’t call, and shouldn’t expect that any tricky plays on your part will succeed. Your options are only two: Fold or push.
Once you have more than 20 big blinds in front of you, you have some risk-taking latitude. It’s not quite enough to play your normal tournament game, but you’re not in imminent danger.
The Shorter Your Stack, the More it Costs
As your stack gets shorter, each bet, call, or raise you make takes an increasingly larger portion of your entire tournament equity. You really can’t play drawing hands because the cost of drawing and failing is too high. As your stack gets shorter, you need to look for opportunities to move all-in. But you can’t let things get too desperate. An all-in bet with just a few chips won’t threaten anyone. An all-in bet with 15 or 20 times the big blinds is still a threat to an opponent, while an all-in move with only three times the big blinds in hand won’t scare anyone.
You Can’t Wait for a Premium Pair
When you’re short stacked, you really don’t have the latitude to wait for a big premium pair, although if you are fortunate enough to be dealt a big pocket pair, you should have no qualms about pushing all-in with them. But you also have to think about pushing with any pocket pair, A-K, A-Q, A-J, A-T, and even weaker hands, such as Ace-anything, K-Q, K-J, K-T, K-9, Q-10+, or even J-10 if you have position and a number of players have folded before it’s your turn to act.
In fact, if you’re at a fairly tight table, you can consider pushing with any two cards as long as no one has entered the pot before you, and you’re in late position. Obviously, the larger your stack, the better your chances are of succeeding.
You Have to Double Up
One of the drawbacks to being short stacked is that your opponents are all aware of your situation, and are more willing to call-in order to knock you out. This is particularly true when you’ve reached the pay ladder of a poker tournament and each player eliminated guarantees those surviving a higher pay-out.
There’s not much you can do about that; your short stack has precluded much of the maneuvering room you’d have if you owned more chips. You have to double up. Nothing else matters as much at this point in your tournament.
Forget About Protecting Your Chips
Good short stacked play breaks many of the rules of tournament poker. In a sense, your short stacked style is diametrically opposed to what you’ve learned about tournament poker. All tournament players know how important it is to protect their chips. But when you’re short stacked, you really don’t want to protect them. You want to find a good situation – that’s critical – to gamble for all your chips in an effort to get back into contention.
You have to get your chips in the middle of the table and hope for the best. Finding a good situation means you have to be first into the pot if that’s possible. Being first in means your opponents are faced with a decision to call or fold. If you are not first into the pot and come in calling – or even raising for all your chips – you have less chance of winning the pot without having to show down the best hand.
A limper in front of you might be someone with a premium hand who’s hoping another player raises so he can come over the top. If there’s a raiser in the pot before you act, you need a very strong hand to re-raise for all your chips. Without a big holding you have to release any of those marginal poker hands you were hoping to play unless, of course, you are so short stacked that you have no other option.
Short Stacked Play is Simplified Poker
Bluffing, calling and floating, and other sophisticated poker plays are predicated on an ability to make creative moves based on your read of your opponent and not necessarily on the strength or potential of your hand. While creative plays have their place at the poker table, just forget about them when you’re short stacked because you’re in a position where the cost of trying a sophisticated play and failing is something you can no longer afford.
As opposed to making big bets on the turn and river, as you’d be prone to with an average sized stack or larger, when you’re short stacked most of your action will take place before the flop or on it. In essence, when you’re short stacked, the last thing you want to do is play a hand to the showdown. You want to bet – and win – early.
Implied Odds Are Not Important
With a short stack, the concept of implied odds also goes out the window. You simply don’t have enough chips to win a large pot on a later betting round. If all you have are 10 or 15 times the big blind, you won’t win any big pots, because you don’t have enough chips to play anything but a smallish, all-in pot.
Playing mid-range and smallish suited connectors, and set-mining with small pairs are also strategies you can toss out of your toolbox when short stacked. They come with a cost and the chance of succeeding with hands like these are small.
Short stacked play means you need to get your money all-in with a big pair or big connectors and hope to win by making top pair with a strong kicker.
Don’t Limp-in if You’re Short Stacked
If you are a short stack, you’ll need to avoid the temptation to limp-in and hope to catch part of the flop inexpensively. If you’re down to 10 big blinds or fewer, you need to go all-in if you play a hand. With 15 or more big blinds, you can afford to make your usual raise . If you have between 10 and 15 big blinds, you’re in the judgment zone and will have to decide whether to go all-in or make a standard raise.
It may seem like a good idea to limp-in and try to catch a good flop inexpensively, but it is more profitable to raise and build the pot with a strong starting hand.
Be Selective; Be Aggressive
If you haven’t gone all-in on the flop, once the flop is exposed you will have a choice to make: push or fold. That’s it. No other options. It’s all or nothing when you see the flop short stacked.
If it looks as if someone else will bet if you check, you are usually better off being the aggressor instead of the caller. If you come out betting, your opponent might fold. If he bets and you call all-in, then you’ve relegated yourself to having to win at the showdown, if you are to win at all.
Conclusion
Here are the three main things to keep in mind when you’re short stacked in a poker tournament:
- Don’t speculate
- Commit while you still have enough chips
- Be first into the pot
You can’t play a small pocket pair in hopes of flopping a set, and you can’t play mid-range suited connectors when you’re a short stack because the odds against hitting your hand are long. Even when you do get lucky, you’re so short stacked that the amount you can win is reduced. Moreover, you can’t take the risk of calling only to have to release your hand if the flop misses you. Be sure the short stacked hands you play are those you’re willing to go to the mat with. You don’t have enough chips to play hit-to-win poker. Go all the way or don’t go at all.
If you are really close to the felt, you have to commit to a hand – and it might just be any hand – while you still have enough chips to convince opponents that folding is in their best interest (also known as fold equity). If you have just a few chips left, you’re going to have to win at the showdown to win at all. There’s a difference between playing with a short stack and playing with barely any chips at all.
Before pushing all-in as a short stack, be sure you’re first into the pot or you have very good cards. If you have 10 big blinds, you still have enough chips to threaten opponents and they will still need a decent hand to call. But if you are not first into the pot, you need a big hand to play because you will probably have to go to the river to win.
Related Lessons
By Lou Krieger
The author of many best-selling poker books, including “Hold’em Excellence” and “Poker for Dummies”. A true ambassador of the game and one of poker’s greatest ever teachers. How much money does a blackjack table make.
For a guide to beating short stack poker players, check out the 'Crushing Shortstackers' concept video.
There are always going to be times in your poker career where you will find yourself as the short stack at the table and probably having a smaller stack than the rest of your opponents.
It may be because you are in the middle of a tournament and had a bad run of cards, or because you simply enjoy to buy in to cash games with a short stack.
But for whatever reason you are playing with a relatively small amount of chips, it is good to be able to understand and employ a good short stack strategy.
What is a short stack in no limit Texas Hold'em?
The typical short stack in any cash game or tournament will have 40 Big Blinds or less.
However, there are varying degrees of short stack poker as a 10BB stack will require a slightly different strategy than a 40BB stack, and it is important to be aware of these differences.
You may have noticed that the term ‘short stack’ is determined by the size of your stack relative to the blinds, and not relative to the stack sizes of your opponents. Therefore even if you have 30BB and your opponents have 20BB, you are still considered to have a short stack, and so you should continue to utilize a good short stack strategy.
How to play with a short stack.
Having a short stack means that you have less room to make plays at the poker table. Bluffs and advanced moves (like float plays) are formed from being able to make educated checks, bets, calls and raises on each round of the hand, so having a short stack will reduce and sometimes eliminate any room for special manoeuvres by both you and your opponents.
Furthermore, the general structure of a no limit Texas Holdem game is that the bigger bets will be made on the turn and river, as the preflop and flop rounds are usually set-up rounds that build the pot and prepare the hand for action. The fact that we have a short stack means that we will rarely be making it past the flop in terms of betting as we will not having enough chips to continue.
With a short stack, most (or all) of the action will be taking place on the preflop and flop betting rounds.
Hands to play when short-stacked.
The fact that we have little room for movement and that our betting will cease at the flop means that we should be playing big heavy hitting hands that will make strong hands at the flop, rather than smaller hands that have ‘potential’.
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We should avoid hands like suited connectors and small pocket pairs, as these hands are profitable when we have a deep stack, as our implied odds are there to compensate for the likely event that we miss the flop. In general we are best entering pots with are big suited cards that can make top pair or better at the flop, although we should exercise some flexibility in starting hand selection depending on the size of our short stack.
Below is a table of the hands we should be looking to play depending on our situation:
Starting hands chart.
Note: Rainbow riches slot machine. This starting hands chart is designed for tournament games where you are pressured to make more moves as the amount of chips left in your stack decreases. This table is not designed for short stack cash game strategy where you have the option of reloading again and again.
- 40BB or less.
- 30BB or less.
- 20BB or less.
- 10BB or less.
Poker Tournament Shove Chart
- AA
- KK
- AKs
- AQs
- JJ
- AK
- AQ
- AJs
- AJ
- TT
- ATs
- KQs
- AT
- KQ
- KJs
- KJ
- AXs
- AX
- QJs
- QJ
As you can see, a lot of emphasis has been placed playing big cards that can make top pair or better, which will often be the best hand on the flop. As you should remember it is unlikely that we will make any more bets past the flop betting round, so we should be more than happy to be making a good pair and get our money in on the flop.
You may notice that hands that include aces have been given a lot of weight, especially if you are a very short stack. This is because of the fact that as a extremely short stack, it is more than likely that you will be pushing or calling an all in on the flop regardless if you have caught a piece of it or not. Therefore if we are holding an ace, we will have a better chance of winning with a high card against an opponent in the event that they did not make a pair either.
Check Shove Poker
How to play these hands.
When we are dealt any of the above cards that are within our range depending on the effective stack sizes, we should always be raising when entering the pot. It may seem like a good idea to limp and try and catch a good flop for cheap, but it is more profitable to raise and build the pot for when we hit our hand, which we are more likely to do if we are holding a strong starting hand.
With a stack of 10BB or more we should be looking to raise around 3 or 4BB if we are first to enter the pot. However, if we have 10BB or less, it will not be too bad of a play to push all-in straight away, as any call from a 4BB raise will leave us completely pot-committed anyway. With 10BB or less, you can think about using the stop and go play also.
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Shove Chart Poker
On the flop we are usually reduced to going all-in or folding as a short stack. The smaller the size of our stack, the more inclined we should be to calling or pushing all-in as we are more likely to be committed to the pot. The shorter the stack, the less the flop will matter to us. However, if we have around 30/40BB, we can be a little more selective because we will not be pot committed and have the opportunity to wait for a better spot.
The shorter your stack, the less post-flop action you are going to deal with. So it's important to have a strong hand that has a good chance of winning after all 5 community cards have been dealt.
Nevertheless, if we are pot committed and will be moving all-in regardless, it is always better to make the all-in bet rather than calling if possible. This is because by betting we are giving our opponent the opportunity to fold the best hand or a potentially winning hand, which is something that is not available to us if we are calling the all-in bet.
- Short stack tips overview.
- Play simple ABC poker. Avoid attempting to bluff and just bet when you have a strong hand.
- Only enter pots with premium hands.
- Fold small pocket pairs and suited connectors as you have do not have implied odds.
- Make strong 4BB raises before the flop.
- Be prepared to move all of your stack in to the middle before or on the flop.
- Leave the table if you win a big pot (and intend on playing short-stacked).
Short stack strategy evaluation.
Good short stack strategy is all about pushing every little edge that we have. Just because we have a smaller stack, it does not mean that we have less chance of winning any individual hand, it just means we have to adapt our play a little differently to each situation.
Short Stack Poker Strategy
Nevertheless, we will be facing an up hill battle if we are in a tournament as each pot we enter is more likely to involve putting our tournament life on the line. At some poker sites (friend's website), the structure of the faster tournaments will mean that you will spend the majority of the game as a short stack, which is a good way to learn how to play good short stack poker.
We should always look for the most profitable situations and get our money in when we think we have the best of it, and we should always prepare for luck to play its part in each outcome. Playing a good, sound short stack strategy does not guarantee to save a tournament life or secure a double up, but it will improve your chances of coming out on top in the long run.
In cash games, you cannot expect to win every all-in, but you can still play a profitable game by picking the right situations and trying to get your money in with the best hand.
Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy.
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