Poker: How to Play a Short-Stack Part 1

Texas Hold'EM No Limits is a complex game with numerous variables that influence the long-term winning ratios. For beginners, as well as for more experienced players who decide to play a higher limit than they are used to, making small adjustments to their gaming strategies can make all the difference between coming out an overall winner, or loser. In a cash game poker session, if you buy-in for less than the authorised maximal amount, in other words if you begin the round in ‘Short-Stack' mode, the majority of your decisions will be limited at the pre-flop and the flop, and even more so at the turn and the river. It is a fact of mathematics, if you play with a short-stack you will have fewer choices to make.

Traditionally, the maximum buy-in for a cash-game table is around 100BB (100 x the big blind). So how do you adapt your gaming strategy when you have less than the required buy-in? This article will aim to answer this question and provide you with a few basic strategies for helping you win in the long-run when playing short-stack.

For those players who regularly buy-in at 100BB, but who run in to difficulty when their stack becomes significantly smaller, as for those player who often find themselves losing money to when facing other players with short-stacks, this article will show you how to beat the players who have mastered the short-stack strategy.

Playing in short-stack mode with a stack of 10BB:
Buy-In's at 10BB are the stuff of the hardened short-stack player. Many sites no longer now, unfortunately, allow players to buy-in with such a low stack, and the average minimum buy-in is now around 20BB, but there are still a couple of online casinos that still allow the 10 x big blind buy-in, one such example is Microgaming's Everest Poker.

The principle advantage of having such a small stack is that you only need to make one decision; fold or go All-In, this strategy is known as the ‘push/fold' technique, where your choice is limited to one or the other. There is no question of raising since all bets will be significant enough to ensure that you will need to go All-In when the need arises.

In other words, whether you bet or go All-In does not change anything in the round, except that it can reward three free cards to your opponents who have only enough force of hand to follow. However, this does not mean that you need to be going All-In at every hand with any old combination of hands. There are different groups of cards and different choices in your position at the table that will dictate the way you should play. The following is a list of base hands, from the book No Limit Hold'EM by David Sklansky. In this book there are a number of tables and calculations, that Sklansky and his partner Chubikov compiled, which indicate the maximum stack with which you should go All-In after the small blind in order to garner a profit in the long term.

At a table with 10 players you can push with the following hands* and in the following positions:

First to Speak: Under the Gun (UTG), UTG+1, UTG+2; Ten-Ten +, Ace-Queen +

Middle to Speak: Next three positions; 8-8 +, A-10 +, Ace-Jack +

Cutoff: to the right of the button; 6-6 +, Ace-8+, Ace-5s +, King-Queen+, King-Jacks +

Button: 2-2 +, Ace-2 +, King-10 +, King-9s +, Queen-Jacks +

Small Blind: King-5 +, King-2s +, Queen-9 +, Queen-5s +, Jack-10 +, Jack-8s +, 10-9s +

* Ace-Queen +, for example, signifies that you would need a minimum hand of Ace-Queen, but that you can play all higher hands too.

Poker: How to Play a Short-Stack Part 1 Poker: How to Play a Short-Stack Part 2 Poker: How to Play a Short-Stack Part 3

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