Playing the Short Stack - Online Poker

Playing Poker short-stacked is just that—your chips are low and the odds are stacked against you. There are a lot of psychological changes that goes on in a player’s mind. Simultaneously, opponents will start to view you differently. Today I’m going to discuss how to play a better short stack in tournament play.

When you start to get low on chips—it usually means you’re in trouble. Try not to get here in the first place, but if you are stuck in this position, there are some changes to your game that you need to make in order to come back. It is very doable—several top-name players tend to play better short-stacked than with a lot of chips. Most of it has to do with the mentality that goes along with few chips.

Sometimes you need to gamble in poker.

When you get into this position, you need to take some chances. If you sit and do nothing, just waiting for premium hands to show up, the escalating blinds will eat you alive. You need to take a few more risks and try to steal a few chips from the guys behind you, and possibly the ones in front. And when I say gamble, I don’t mean bet any two cards—force some action with decent starters on a semi-bluff. You’re putting all your chips in, hoping that nobody will call you and you’ll take down the blinds and anyone else who called before you.

When no one has called in front of you and you’re in late position, you should seriously think about getting all your money in the pot. Late in the tourney when there are less players, you need to pick your spot before you run out of chips. 5-10 big blinds or less is the potential area when you want to make a move. Blinds will probably go up at least once during these 5-10 blinds, so realistically you have more like 4-7 blinds left. Don’t let that eat you alive–force people to call your large bet. Once you get down to 3-5 times the big blind, almost anyone will call a bet with decent starters. Sometimes you’ll get called with KK or AA, but that’s just too bad. You’ve gotten yourself in that position and you can’t do anything about that.

Your chips are worth more than theirs.

This is an important point to realize. Every chip in front of you is more valuable to you than each of theirs. 100 chips out of your 1000 chip stack is 10% of your entire bankroll. 100 chips to their 3000 chip stack is 3.3%–a big dropoff in value. Why is this important? Well, it means that every chip you win is a larger addition to your bankroll than your opponents. If you push all-in trying to pick up the blinds, your opponents may not think the blinds are worth defending. To you, however, they are a significant deposit to your stack. This also leads me to my next point.

Others will think you’re desperate.

Don’t expect people to roll over for you—wolves smell the wounded, and they are prepared to hunt you down. They realize your back is to the wall and try to take you out before you can replenish, gain strength, and become a significant force once again.

You’ll see people try to get more aggressive with you, forcing an almost automatic raise when you’re in the blind. If you don’t have anything, obviously you fold. If you do have something, sometimes your best play is to play right back at them and go all in. The aggressiveness can be taken to extremes, and some players are just raising on the fact that they smell your fear.

What you’ll also see sometimes is players calling with mediocre hands. They think you could be betting with any two(which is true), and you’ll find a lot of callers with stuff like K-Q, A-x a lot of the time. If you’ve really got a good hand in early position, shove in. You can double or even triple up sometimes when dopes call with weak hands. Same goes for hitting something on the flop. You’ve paired up and they’ve got A-Q—at this point just push all in. Sometimes they’ll get you in the end, but that’s poker. Remember the one of the basic rules of poker—get your money in when you’ve got the best of it.