• Short Stack Poker Tournament Strategy Bracket
• Short Stack Poker Tournament Strategy Tactics
• Short Stack Poker Tournament Strategy Game

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.

Super-Short Stack Strategy. To kick off our strategy discussion, we will begin by talking about super-short stacks in tournament poker. Since these super-short stacks only have 10 big blinds or less in them, there is not a whole lot of flexibility to be found here. Play Short Stack Poker Like a Pro. As tournament players, we constantly find ourselves in situations where we have to play short stack poker.For the purpose of this article, I will define a short. However, there are so many things wrong with this poker strategy. The first thing that’s wrong with this short stack poker approach is that one orbit in most poker tournaments is about 15 minutes. This will depend on the speed of the dealer and players, but that’s about the average time frame. Playing a short stack in poker is one of the most fun things you can ever do in Texas Hold’em. I have been a short and mid stack pro for almost 10 years and have beat as high as 600NL. In this article, I will cover the meaning of short stacking strategy for both cash games and tournaments.

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’.

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: 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.

• AA
• KK
• QQ
• AKs
• AQs
• JJ
• AK
• AQ
• AJs

30BB or less.

• AJ
• TT
• ATs
• KQs

20BB or less.

• AT
• KQ
• KJs
• KJ

10BB or less.

• 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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

Comments

Spin-ups have long been a part of online poker; players take shots at higher levels and every player dreams of spinning their bankroll up to six-figures, but the sad fact of the matter is – not everyone can be that lucky. Taking shots can sometimes be a little risky, and more than a few budding poker stars have gone broke playing above their bankroll or by sitting at a table with their entire roll in front of them. Indeed some might go so far as to call this gambling…

While playing within your bankroll at the micro-stakes levels (anything $0.25/$0.50 and under) can occasionally be a bit of a grind, sometimes living a bit dangerously is fun and gambling like anything else (except perhaps crack cocaine usage) is fine in moderation. In fact, what if I told you there was a way to build yourself a sizable online bankroll without risking your entire net worth. A way that enabled you to play at decent stakes online without having to pay in thousands of dollars onto an internet poker account. How, I here you ask? By going on the rampage…

'Rampaging' is a growing trend amongst online players who want to play at stakes where they can win decent money without necessarily having the bankroll behind them. The more traditional early form of rampaging involved sitting down at a table with your entire online bankroll, or at least the entirety of the roll sitting in your online account. Needless to say, this is a very 'boom or bust' approach that has seen more than a few people chew through their online roll with nothing but an empty poker account to show for it. No, the thinking man's rampage is where it's at these days.

The ethos behind modern rampaging stems from the short-stack approach to the game; buying in for the minimum at a level like $0.10/$0.25 for $5, only playing premium hands and shipping most of the money in either pre-flop or on the flop, doubling-up and then leaving the table. Now while your online short-stacking grinder will do this repeatedly over several tables at once and tend to stick to the same levels, your discerning rampager must take a different approach.

Normally, to play at the $1/$2 tables you need a bankroll of at least $4,000, where a single buy-in is $200 or around 5% of your roll. At the $0.10/$0.25 levels then, your bankroll needs to be around $500. But (and this is where rampaging really comes into its own) while you are short-stack rampaging you are buying in for the minimum so your bankroll can be that much smaller – a short-stacked rampager can have a bankroll of $50 to play in a $0.10/$0.25 game and still only be buying in for 5% of their roll.

Rampaging works best at the six-max tables and lends itself just as well to Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) as it does to No Limit Texas Hold 'Em (NLHE). In fact, poker author Rolf Slotboom discusses an excellent way to short-stack the PLO tables that lends itself particularly well to rampaging in his book 'Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha', which is definitely worth a read if you are looking to improve your online PLO game and increase your aggression factor.

Controlled aggression is an essential part of all good poker player's games; usually the more aggressive the player, the better the results. However, in the modern online game everyone is aggressive and it is this fact that the rampaging player will be using to their advantage:

Preparation is the key to success here – you are looking for a table (or tables) with a high average pot but with a low 'players per flop percentage'. Scan through the available tables (or use software like Table Tracker or SpadeIt that can be programmed to search for specific players or tables) until you see one that matches your requirements, then open it up and study how the game is playing out.

Short Stack Poker Tournament Strategy Bracket

A table with large pots and less players per flop generally means that there are fewer calling stations on the table and one or two aggressive players who are committing quite a bit of money to the pots, usually through a combination of pre-flop raises and re–raises – which is just what you want. The more players who see a flop increases the amount of variance present in the game; the harder it is to get your hand heads-up or three way, the more likely it is that your big hands will get cracked. By picking a table with aggressive players (especially those who like to raise and re-raise to isolate pre-flop) you stand a better chance of taking your hand heads-up, where your penchant for picking strong starting hands provides you with an edge over the starting hand ranges of a good LAG (loose-aggressive) player.

You will be buying in for the minimum (although you could stretch to double the minimum i.e. $10 in a $0.10/$0.25 game if you want a bit more play) and looking to sit with a strong aggressive player to your left (yes, you want them to have position on you).

Patience is the key here; you are waiting for fairly decent hands. In Hold 'Em you will be playing the big Pocket Pairs (Aces down to Tens) and big Aces (suited or unsuited) down to Ace Queen. You can mix this up in late position by playing pairs down to Sevens, suited Aces down to Ace Ten and unsuited Aces down to Ace Jack.

In PLO, hands like double-suited Aces or Kings where all four cards work well together and double-suited run-down hands are what you are looking for. When you find a hand that you like you usually just want to call knowing the aggressive player will raise and get called in a couple of spots so you can re-raise all-in. Obviously you need to mix this up with some Button raises and re-raises when you have the goods as well so you don't become too predictable. When playing Hold 'Em this strategy differs slightly from PLO; it is usually better to be the raiser to reduce the number of players who see the flop.

Hopefully the obliging LAG should re-raise giving you some protection and taking the hand heads-up so you are getting around 3-1 on your money while being anywhere around an 80/20 to 60/40 favourite in the hand. Obviously this is not an exact science and the key to success is picking your spots carefully. Occasionally you'll be against two other players in the pot and while your win percentage may drop here you are still getting a pretty good return on your money for taking a favourable gamble. The trick is not to get too greedy, as soon as you have doubled up and have enough to buy in for the minimum for the next level you leave the table and jump up stakes. Rampaging differs from short-stacking in the fact that you are consistently moving up levels while only risking around 5% of your roll.

Of course, you can experiment with this strategy a little if you find a level you are comfortable playing at and wish to stick around in a particular game for a while. However, remember the whole point of rampaging is to move UP the stakes.

Short Stack Poker Tournament Strategy Tactics

The best part about this approach is the fact you are risking a little to win a lot in a short space of time, while still using some semblance of bankroll management: While you are effectively playing higher than your roll allows you should still only be risking around 5% of your total net worth. The best way to ensure success is to give yourself a total you are happy reaching and then calling it quits and banking the money. If, at any point throughout the rampage you have reached a point where you are sitting with an amount in front of you that is more than 10% of your roll (or more than your entire bankroll if you are that lucky) then take the money and run.

While you won't make many friends doing this (short-stackers are universally hated and despised) there are no friends at the poker tables anyway and the internet in particular allows you to indulge in some behaviour that just wouldn't run in a live game.

Be warned however, that this approach can stunt your poker game if relied upon too heavily. If done properly it's a great way of building a bankroll that enables you to play at decent stakes with minimum risk. If it works, it can see you spin up an initial $50 deposit to a couple of thousand, enabling you to play the $0.50/$1 properly while occasionally attempting to take shots and enjoy the odd rampage at the higher levels, if it doesn't work you've lost $5. Show me a downside…

Short Stack Poker Tournament Strategy Game

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