Shortstack strategy

Things you will learn:

• How to play well when you don't have many chips
• Why buying in 'short stacked' can give you an advantage over other players

Buying in as a short stack is often looked upon with scorn by regular players at No-Limit Hold'em cash tables.

They think it ruins the game. But why would this ruin the game? Surely such a simple strategy must be trivially easy to defeat. Consider this, though - these people complain because they couldn't beat the short-stacked players. Here's a strategy for No-Limit Hold'em based on this approach. It's not 'real poker', but it does work well…

If you have a choice of seats, you sit with the most aggressive players to your left. If not, you need to select the most aggressive table you can find. The idea is that you will wait for a very strong hand and then either limp-raise all-in if you're in early position, or re-raise all-in if you're in late position.

In early position, you limp hoping that an aggressive player will raise. If you're lucky, other players will call, then when the action returns to you, you can spring the trap by re-raising all-in. At this point, your opponents might all fold, in which case you pick up the pot immediately. You might get one or more calls, meaning you will usually have the best hand and be in a profitable situation, possibly with dead money in the pot from the blinds and any callers who subsequently folded.

For example, in a $1/$2 no-limit game, you limp under the gun with A♥ A♣. The aggressive player to your left raises to $8 and gets two callers, making the pot $29. You then raise all-in for your entire $40 stack, putting both the initial raiser and the callers to a difficult decision.

In late position, you re-raise all-in. For example, if an early position player makes it $8 and gets a caller, you can re-raise all-in for your $40 stack, putting the original raiser in a tricky position. Note that in both situations, you must wait for a raise before committing yourself. Simply opening the pot for your entire stack is unlikely to be profitable unless you are at a particularly loose table. If nobody obliges you by raising, you continue your trapping strategy to the flop and turn, where your goal is to check-raise or re-raise all-in, assuming you haven't completely missed.

Your hand selection for this strategy has to be very tight. The basic hands to make this move with are aces, kings, queens, A-K, and A-Q suited. If your table is very loose and aggressive, you may want to add jacks, A-Q offsuit, and possibly even 10? and A-J suited. All other hands must be folded.

Once you have doubled up on a particular table, you can either leave and move to another, or you can top up to a full buy-in and play 'proper poker'. There are some significant benefits to this strategy. Firstly, you're almost always getting your money in with the best hand. Because your range of hands is so narrow, it's a massive mistake for your opponents to call you with something marginal.

Another benefit is that you will often create dead money. By limp-raising, you are effectively 'squeezing' the original raiser in between yourself and a caller. If they decide to fold, they will have committed money to the pot with no chance of winning anything in return. This is excellent for you.

You also limit your post-flop decision-making. If you're not very good at play on the later streets, or you find yourself paying off too much with the worst hand on a later betting round, this strategy will practically eliminate that weakness from your game. Consequently, this method of play allows you to take shots at higher limits than you may usually play, without risking too much of your bankroll.

If you end up all-in in a multi-way pot, you will often be protected by other players who are fighting for it. For example, you are all-in against two opponents, holding A♣ K♠ on a flop of K♣ J♥ 2♠. Your opponents hold K♦ Q♦ and J♦ 10♥ respectively. Your equity in this position is about 68%. However, you'll often find the player holding K♦ Q♦ bets, knocking out the player holding J♦ 10♥. This increases your equity to about 86%! They have done you a huge favour without even realising it.

With a short-stack, you'll often be pegged as a weak or unimaginative player. Consequently, your opponents may become overly loose or aggressive when in a pot with you or take chances they wouldn't take against others. This is exactly the kind of attitude you would like to foster when using this short-stacked approach.

It's easy to multi-table when you're playing such a simple strategy. Consequently, you can earn a lot of loyalty points in a short period, or earn a pending bonus more quickly. Of course, you can also significantly increase your hourly rate by playing as many tables as you can handle.

Of course, it's not all plain sailing. You may flop a huge hand such as quads and not be able to extract as much value as you would like. This is one of the key downsides to playing a short-stack and one of the reasons why most good players buy-in for as much as they can. Hands like quads do not come along all that often and it's nice to make the maximum when they do.

You'll also be outdrawn more often. With deep stacks, you'll have the opportunity to eliminate opposition on three betting rounds in an attempt to prevent a nasty outdraw. With a short-stack, you have just one betting round to do the same thing. You may find yourself in a coin flip situation occasionally.

Most internet poker sites will not allow you to 'go south' (leave the table, then return shortly afterwards with fewer chips) too frequently, so you'll have to play at a site that either has a lot of tables running or use this strategy on a couple of sites at the same time.

Lastly, and importantly, by limping in pre-flop with the intention of raising, you will put yourself in some tough situations when nobody raises as expected. For example, if you limp in middle position with A-K, only the blinds call, and the flop comes K-7-4, you may find yourself losing your stack to a player who has K-4 or 7-4. But this is the risk you take when playing this way.

More advanced players may scoff at such a simplistic approach to such a complex game, but there is little doubt this strategy wins money. After all, isn't that what poker is all about?