Playing the Shortstack in Online Tournaments
Poker tournaments are characterized by increasing blinds. That’s exactly the difference between a tournament and a cash game. But not everybody loves increasing blinds. If you only have a few chips left, meaning that you have a short stack you can barely breath and don’t want the blinds to go up. With less chips there’s less room to maneuver and you’ll most likely going home soon. So how do you play in this situation in online poker tournaments?
Definition of a short stack
There are plenty of different definitions of short stack in poker books and on the internet. Those definitions aren’t consistent and don’t give a common advice. Let’s define a short stack as a player that only has left 20 big blinds or less. So if the blinds are 100/200 and you have 4000 in your stack you’re called a short stack. The reason for this definition is that you’ll be committed right on the flop in most cases. Committed means that you already invested too many chips to fold. Let’s assume you raise to 600, two players call and you make a continuation bet on the flop with 1400 then you’ve already invested about half your chips.
So how do you play a short stack with 10 – 20 big blinds left? You can play the so called short stack strategy others use to play in cash games. You raise with strong hands like 99, AK to AJ and try to move all-in on the flop if you hit it somehow. With such a short stack you have to try some steals in order to survive. So if a player in front of you raises pre-flop and that player isn’t extremely tight, you can usually come over the top and push with decent holdings.
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Ultra Short Stacks
Once you only have 10 big blinds or less you’re called an ultra short stack. A standard raise before the flop makes no sense any more because you’ll commit yourself to the pot with every raise. Suppose the blinds are 50/100 and you have 1000 left. You make a raise to 300 before the flop and one player calls. There are 600 in the pot and you only have 700 left. Every flop that doesn’t look horrible for you makes it obsolete to move all-in.
So you have to raise or reraise all-in before the flop and there’s no way around. Futhermore, don’t be selective with your hands. If you raise all-in with JT it’s not that bad. Most of the time someone calls with 88 or AQ and you’re not in bad shape. At least not worse than you’re if you wait for premium hands with such a short stack..
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On March 30, 2009 Bet365 Bingo wrote:
I never really find myself on the short stack. I try to play an all or nothing type of style but after reading this article I think I might need to make a few changes.
On April 6, 2009 Ukash Poker wrote:
These seems like a decent strategy for multi table tournaments, but in a sit and go I’d feel fine with 20 big blinds at that level and most likely would be a medium to big stack heading into the bubble.
Keep up the strategy, software and strategy go hand in hand so will look forward to more like this.
On July 15, 2009 ipoker rakeback wrote:
I think it’s very hard to judge whether you really have a shortstack or not. Suppose you have ultra aggressive opponents that push allin every hand. Hell, even 50 big blinds can be short because you have to look for the right spot to double up. But if your opponents are very tight you can even wait with 10 big blinds and push allin with weaker hands.
On March 8, 2010 Casino Bonus wrote:
Hate winding up as the short stack as then it is usually an all in or nothing.