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Dealing with a Short Stack
January 2nd, 2008 - Dealing with a Short Stack
No matter how good a poker tournament player thinks he is, there are going to be times when things don’t go as hoped and you’re left with a short stack to play with. Some of the best players in the world are great because they know how to handle a short stack at any stage of a tournament.
You should consider yourself short-stacked any time you have less than 10 big blinds remaining in stack. For example, if the blinds are 50/100 and you have 800 chips left you’re definitely short-stacked and will need to pay close attention to the next few paragraphs. Keep in mind that if you regularly find yourself in this situation then you may need to adjust your early stage strategy.
The key to making a short stack into an average or even large stack is to ensure you’re the first one into a pot. Like most cases in poker, if you’re the aggressor and enter the pot first you’ll find players more likely to fold behind you. You’ll need to pick a hand that you feel is good enough to go with at this stage, maybe two face cards or any ace is good enough for you to put all your chips at risk with.
There’s no point in following the standard raising protocol of three times the big blind. Once you do that you’ll be pot committed anyways and will be forced to put the rest of your chips at risk, so you may as well shove them all in and hope to get called by a worse hand or have the table fold to you so you can steal the blinds and antes.
If there is a raise in front of you you’ll need to give careful consideration to your opponent and draw on what you know of his play. What does he normally raise with? How many chips does he have left? How likely is it that your hand is favorite or only a small underdog to his? Again, if you’re going to call that raise you may as well put all of your chips in before the flop since they’ll be going in anyways after the flop. You may need a bit of luck in out-flopping or catching up to your opponents hand at this point, but waiting for a premium hand with a short-stack is only delaying the inevitable.
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