It’s a fourhanded $2-$4 6-max game on FullTiltPoker. The cutoff folds. The button, with an $80 stack, has 7 3 . He raises to $10 and wins the blinds.

I think a lot of these short stackers are stealing more than their share of blinds.

Theoretically speaking, it should be harder for a short stacker to steal the blinds from the button than it is for a full stacker. Short stacks blunt positional advantage, so the out of position blind players should be able to defend more frequently.

For instance, say you’re in the big blind in a $2-$4 game with a $400 stack. Consider two scenarios. First, a strong player with $400 opens for $14 on the button and the small blind folds. Second, a good short stacker with $80 opens for $10 on the button and the small blind folds.

Overall, the second scenario is significantly more favorable for you, and you should be able to play a wider range of hands profitably. Apart from the fact that it’s $10 to call in the first scenario and only $6 in the second (a not at all insignificant difference), the short stacker will have less positional leverage and many fewer opportunities to outplay you postflop.

In practice, it appears that many full-stacked regulars don’t alter their blind strategy much between the two scenarios, and they tend to err on the conservative side. That fact allows short stackers to slurp up far more than their share of the blind money.

When you’re threehanded and playing effectively 20BB stacks, theoretically speaking, the money should be flying. There should be liberal three-betting and four-bet shoving, and liberal flop check-shoving and calling. The blind money is large enough compared to the stack sizes that you can frequently get your stack in “light” (I put it in quotes because it only seems light to many of us) and still get an overlay.

I don’t see this when I play. When someone gets it in against a short stacker, I tend to see two “legitimate” hands more frequently than I should. Basically, I think players in the big blind should use the following plays more often when short stackers open on the button.

Three-Betting Light

If an $80 stack opens a wide range of hands for $10 on the button in a $2-$4 game, you can three-bet to about $22 with impunity with a reasonably wide range as well. First of all, I’ve noticed that many short stackers fold too frequently to a small three-bet, so you can exploit that theoretical error by making the play more often.

Beyond that, if the short stacker is betting 1/8 of his stack with a wide range on the button (as many do), you can three-bet a wide range of hands for value, and the bottom of this “value” range might seem light at first. For instance, in full-stacked play one might consider three-betting with a hand like A-8 suited to be a “light” three-bet because presumably you do so with the intention of usually folding it to a four-bet. But against a short-stacker opening a wide range on the button, three-betting with A-8 suited should be a very standard play. It’s a raise for value, and it’s a hand you should feel comfortable getting it in with should the short stacker shove on you – provided the short stacker shoves often over a three-bet as he should.

The other thing about three-betting to $22 is that it leaves you room to fold to a shove with the worst hands in your three-betting range. If you’re three-betting with the right range, the short stacker should know that you’ll fold sometimes to a shove, but usually you’ll call, and most of the hands the short stacker opens on the button will be significantly behind your calling range if they shove them over your three-bet.

The bottom line of this three-betting strategy is that it will prevent the short stacker from robbing you blind of your blinds.

Calling And Making A Play On The Flop

Some short stackers play well preflop but get a little soft once the flop comes. You can take advantage of them by flat calling the small button raises, planning to make some moves postflop. The two simplest moves you can make are check-shoving and donk betting.

Check-shove bluffing is the natural play against short stackers who continuation bet too often. Say they’re opening 50 percent of their hands on the button and betting nearly every flop when checked to. You can destroy that strategy by calling frequently from the blind and check-shoving a lot of flops. You generally won’t even be risking that much because when called you will often have decent equity, and the stacks are short to begin with. For instance, with a hand like Q-T I would often flat call preflop and check-shove a lot of flops. I’ll win many pots uncontested, and when called I will often have at least six outs.

Other short stackers tend to play a sort of fit-or-fold strategy once they see a flop. They check behind a lot when they miss, hoping to check the hand down. Naturally, check-shoving doesn’t work against that strategy because the short stacker’s betting range is strong. But donk betting works instead. You can fire out for half the pot at a lot of flops and win more than your share. And sometimes when you check the flop and your opponent checks it back, you have an almost automatic win if you bet about half-pot on the turn.

Don’t Let The Short Stackers Rob You

For the most part, the short stackers aren’t getting it in light from under the gun in a 6-max game. But a lot of them know they can open light on the button and get away with it. Don’t let them. Fire back at them either by three-betting preflop or by flat-calling and making plays postflop. If they know how to play their stack size well, you won’t really get an edge on them by doing this. But you will even it up and cut into their profit. Don’t be a soft target for the short stackers’ bread and butter.

[This article appeared in the December 31, 2008 issue (Vol. 21, No. 26) of Card Player.]

“How short a stack can you play before it’s not profitable anymore? At some point the blinds eat you away too fast and you can’t wait for a good hand anymore, right?”

This question is based on a false assumption that is the subject of today’s article. Yes, there are some stack sizes too short to play profitably, but the culprit isn’t the blinds. It’s the rake. Depending on the rake structure, at some point the house is taking too large a percentage out of each pot for you to profit with some short stack sizes.

But say you’re paying time instead of a rake, and the charge is relatively small compared to the game size. (For those who don’t know, live cardrooms often charge a flat fee of, say, $7 per half hour in lieu of taking a rake.) Now you can play any stack size profitably, from 1BB on up. The blinds are never so big that they will “eat you alive.”

The simplest reason why it’s impossible for your stack to be so short the blinds “eat you alive” is the table stakes rule. If you have a 10BB stack, then as far as you’re concerned your opponents all have 10BB stacks as well. The same rules apply to everyone. When poker is zero sum (as it mostly is in a time game where the charge is small compared to the stakes), if the same rules apply to everyone then no one can be inherently unprofitable. If I’m bound to lose money because I’m playing a 10BB stack, then who am I losing it to? The guy across the table who is also playing effectively a 10BB stack whenever he’s in a pot with me? If we’re both playing effectively the same stack size, then how can someone have an advantage? It doesn’t make sense.

No stack size is inherently unprofitable. It all comes down to what strategy you employ.

The reason the “blinds will eat you alive” mindset is easy to buy into is that we often assume that short stack players must necessarily play very tightly. After all, when you play a 10BB stack you’re going to see a lot of showdowns. And if you’re bound for showdown, you’d better have the goods, right?

It’s true – to a point. When you’re playing a 10BB stack, you probably won’t be calling many preflop raises on the button with 5-3 suited like you possibly might playing deep stacks. You do want hands with showdown value. But they don’t necessarily have to be massive hands.

For instance, say you’re in the small blind with 10BB. Everyone folds to an aggressive player in the cutoff who opens for 3BB. You have Ad7c. Your best play is to shove. Sometimes you’ll catch the cutoff with a hand like 9-6 suited and he’ll elect to fold. Sometimes he’ll have something like A-9 suited or K-J and call you. When you look at all the possible outcomes – sometimes winning the pot immediately and sometimes getting called and winning a showdown – shoving with the hand will show an overall profit.

A-7 offsuit isn’t a massive hand. But it’s strong enough given the stack sizes, the likely opening range of a player in the cutoff, and the random hand in the big blind to show a profit.

Short stack play is all about finding the right borderline hands in these situations. Maybe shoving with A-7 is profitable and Q-7 is unprofitable. What hands are at the break-even point?

If everyone had folded to you in the small blind, then Q-7 offsuit is actually right around the break-even point for open-shoving 10BB. (Source: The Mathematics of Poker by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman, p. 136) And that’s if your opponent plays a perfect 10BB stack strategy. If your opponent plays less than perfectly than you can profitably shove some even weaker hands.

The blinds won’t beat you because you can tailor your strategy to the situation. You can play as tightly or as loosely as the situation calls for. And when the game is shorthanded or the stacks are very small, you should actually play quite loosely.

I must take some of the blame for propagating the myth that playing a short stack means playing super-tight. In my book, Getting Started in Hold ‘em, I outline a strategy for playing a 20BB stack that I would classify as super-tight. I designed that strategy as a foolproof one for rank beginners. I wanted a strategy that was simple enough that literally anyone could follow it and that would be at least break-even in any standard, full ring cash game.

But my super-tight strategy isn’t the optimal strategy for 20BB stacks in a full ring game. It’s just a passable strategy.

In a fourhanded game with 10BB stacks, the strategy is downright horrible. The blinds will indeed eat you alive, but it’s not because the stacks are too short to win. It’s because the strategy stinks for those game parameters.

If you come up with the right strategy, though, you can profitably play 20BB in a tenhanded game, and you can profitably play 8BB in a fourhanded game. The blinds can’t doom you to lose. Only the rake can.

[This article appeared in the December 17, 2008 issue (Vol. 21, No. 25) of Card Player.]

A few issues back, I said that short stacks get two main advantages over deeper stacks: They avoid mixed stack play, and they gain fold equity without risk. Strategies differ depending on the stack sizes: You might play a hand very differently with 200BB than you would with 40BB. So if you have two opponents, one with 200BB and one with 40BB, often you have a problem. You can’t play perfectly against either of them for fear that the other one will get the better of you. So you have to compromise. Mixed stack “compromises” ultimately cost you money. If you play short, generally you will never have to play these mixed stack situations, and thus you never have to compromise.

Furthermore, if you are the short stack against two deep stacks, sometimes your opponents will still be duking it out in a side pot after you’ve gotten all-in. If one gets the other to fold, you’ve gained winning chances without risking anything extra. That’s a bonus you’ll get only if you’re a short stack.

Typically I like practical poker advice. Theoretical discussions make my eyes glaze over. But I’m going to break that pattern here by going theoretical for a bit. I think it’s worth the effort.

Say you are playing a sixhanded game against five copies of yourself. You play well with deep and short stacks, and your opponents play exactly as you do. It’s a $1-$2 no-limit game, and you each buy in for $200 (and rebuy every time you dip below $200). Thankfully, this game isn’t raked. If you play it for a long time, you should expect to break even, and you should expect the same for each of your five opponents. Getting a long-term edge in poker depends on imbalances. It depends on exploiting weaknesses. If you play the same way your opponents do, you won’t get an edge, and ultimately you’ll just break even. So you against five copies of you is a break-even game for everyone.

Now say you are playing a sixhanded game against five copies of yourself, but you buy in for $100 while your opponents all buy in for $200. You play only three hours at a time, so after every three hours of play the stacks are reset to their original sizes. You should expect to make a profit in this game. Even though you’re playing against players as good as yourself, the inherent advantages of playing a short stack will win the day and make you money over time.

Now say you are playing a sixhanded game against five copies of yourself, and you are allowed to buy in for $2 (just a chip and a chair) while your opponents all buy in for $200. You always rebuy for $2 if you go broke, and after three hours all the stacks are reset to their original sizes. You should still expect to make a profit at the expense of your normal-stacked opponents! Perhaps this conclusion seems ridiculous to you. After all, how can you “beat the blinds” if all you have is one big blind in your stack?

When you play with one big blind, the table stakes rule says that your opponents play with only one big blind as well when they’re in a hand with you. Imagine a game where you play against five copies of yourself and everyone has only $2. It’s a break-even game for everyone. Sure, someone this hand has the crippling disadvantage of posting the blind, but next hand that will rotate, and eventually everyone will share the burden of the blinds equally. Since no money leaves the table and no one has an inherent advantage, everyone breaks even.

Because of the table stakes rule, however, when you play with $2 it is, to you, as if everyone were playing with just $2. Sure, they have more money that they play against other players with, but to you that money is irrelevant. So if you would break even at a table full of $2 stacks, you will at least break even against bigger stacks. But you’ll actually do better than that, as the advantages of a short stack will once again kick in. For instance, say you limp in, someone raises, the blinds fold, and you’re heads-up. The pot will be $7, and you have only one opponent. You’re getting 5-to-2 on your money, and you only have to beat one player. Those are very attractive odds, and they come from the short stack advantage.

When I say that short stacks have a natural advantage, this effect is what I’m talking about. Obviously, you won’t find yourself in a sixhanded game against five copies of yourself very often, so one might dismiss this entire exercise as impractical. But it’s not. Sure, if you’re the best player at a table full of gamblers looking to drop their stack on the first gutshot they see, you’ll probably make the most by buying in for the maximum and waiting for your payday. But if you find yourself at a wild game full of cagey players (and plenty of these exist), remember that you can get the best of a table of players just as fine as you merely by buying in short.

There are two other real-life lessons from this mythical game against five copies of you. First, when you’re in a tournament and you have just a tiny stack, don’t give up! You may have lost most of your winning chances, but remember that your remaining chips are more powerful and more valuable than they might at first seem. Second, don’t take the short stacks too lightly. If you try to “bully” them too much with loose raises, you may just be playing into their hands.

So while you perhaps shouldn’t try to buy in to every game for just one big blind, know that if you could and if you tailored your strategy to make the most of your miniature buy-in, your chip and chair would ultimately rule the day.

[This article appeared originally in the January 2, 2008 issue (Vol. 20, No. 26) of Card Player.]

While not completely reliable, the amount of money on the table is a reasonable indicator of how aggressive the game is. If all the stacks are short and medium, expect a quiet, perhaps even weak-tight game. If everyone is deep, then you should probably expect fireworks. If one player is really deep, and everyone else has a normal-sized stack, there’s a good chance the deep player is loose and aggressive. It’s not always the case – he could be deep just because he got really lucky or because he’s been glued to the seat for 48 hours (look for 32 ounce coffee cups and bloodshot eyes) – but loose-aggressive players are the most likely ones to build deep stacks in a game with a maximum buy-in.

Back to my crazy $2-$5 game. Usually I would buy in for the maximum, $500, to give me the best chance to win a big pot. But yesterday I wanted to try out a strategy that I consider foolproof for beating crazy no-limit games. I bought in for $300 or 60 big blinds. Last issue I said that I often buy in for around that much to scope out a game. After all, I can buy more chips before any hand, but I can never take money off the table.

But this buy-in was a little different, because the foolproof strategy relies on a short buy-in to work. In a crazy game, many players will play very loosely preflop, even for a raise. After watching a few hands (and after losing my first buy-in right off the bat with pocket jacks against 6-5 on a 6-5-2 flop), I saw that the “standard” preflop raise at the table was to between $30 and $40, and typically between three and six people would call it. So a typical hand would see five or six players to the flop for around $150 – a crazy game indeed.

Naturally, if five or six players are seeing every flop, their standards are none too high. Many players were playing (for raises) any two suited, offsuit connectors, and hands like K-7 offsuit. Now if everyone at the table has $2,000 in front of them, and if everyone is playing loose like this, then the low standards don’t actually hurt anyone. To get an advantage in poker (or to get taken advantage of), someone needs to adjust their strategy to exploit the weaknesses. If no one is taking advantage of it, playing loose is harmless.

But the foolproof strategy is designed to take advantage of it. First, you don’t have $2,000 in front of you. You have only $300, making the $30 preflop bet a sizable 10 percent of your stack. And, by the elegant symmetry of the table stakes rule, it’s also 10 percent of all of your opponents’ stacks when they’re playing against you. (Remember, their extra money is irrelevant when they’re playing against you. It’s as if it weren’t even on the table.)

Playing K-7 offsuit for one percent of the stacks can work out fine. Playing it for 10 percent is a recipe for disaster. They simply can’t outflop or outplay you often enough to make up for building such a big pot with such a stinker of a hand.

So what’s the foolproof strategy? Buy in for 40 to 60 big blinds. Wait for strong starting hands: pocket pairs, big aces, and K-Q. In position you can add in some more hands. Ask yourself, “Is this hand better than what my opponents are probably playing? Or am I playing this to try to get lucky?” If you’re playing to get lucky, don’t play. For instance, if you see 8 6 , throw it away. It can be a good hand when the stacks are deep and you have some control over your opponents, but it will only cost you money in a wild and woolly game.

So you’re waiting for good hands. If you have a medium or big pocket pair, or if you have two big cards, raise preflop. With small pocket pairs, or on the button with your somewhat weaker hands, you can just limp.

If the pot is raised and you hit the flop well, move all-in. For instance, say you raise to $35 preflop with K Q and five players call. The pot is $210 before the flop, and you have $265 remaining. The flop comes Q 9 7 . If everyone checks to you, push all-in. Even if someone bets in front of you, push all-in. The pot is too large to consider folding a hand as strong as yours. Indeed, that’s what makes this strategy “foolproof.” Your goal is to get your money in early with good hands so there are no tough decisions. You aren’t relying on your hand-reading skills or your creativity to give you an advantage; you’re relying on raw math.

That’s the basic idea. Obviously, you won’t push with every hand on every flop. If you raise preflop with pocket jacks and the flop comes A-K-6, check and fold. If you have A-K and the flop comes J-9-7, check and fold. If you limped in preflop with pocket fives and the flop comes Q-T-3, check and fold. But if you connect solidly with the flop, the pot will be big enough and your stack will be small enough that you can just put your money in and be confident that, over time, your bets will earn you money.

You can mix it up a little bit. For instance, you can try limp-reraising if you get a strong hand in early position. Or you can try a squeeze bluff if a loose player raises and a few people call. For example, if someone raises to $40 and three people call, you can try moving all-in with J 9 . If no one calls, you win $160 for your $300 risk. And if you do get called, you’re getting 3-to-2 on your money, enough to compensate you even if you run into A-K.

The reason many people have trouble in wild games is they repeatedly leave themselves in a no-mans-land. They flop a decent hand, but then the big bets start pouring in, and they second-guess themselves. Buy buying in a little shorter, you can get your money in with confidence and with a mathematically guaranteed, foolproof advantage.

[This article appeared originally in the December 5, 2007 issue (Vol. 20, No. 24) of Card Player.]