The Art of Short Stack PLay

We have all been there. You have played a strong game, won a few pots, lost others and generally kept your head above water but now find yourself short stacked with the blinds rising rapidly. How you react to this situation determines if you are going to be profitable or not.

There are 3 critical points that must be considered in Short Stack play which generally starts at 13BB. When you have 13BB's you can still raise pre-flop 2BB's to 3BB's and get away from a re-raise or bad action after the flop and be left with 10BB's. When you have 10BB's you are in all-in mode. This is because if you raise to 2 or 3 BB and get re-raised you are committed to the pot so you are better off shoving all your chips pre-flop so that you can reap the rewards of fold equity and push someone off a better starting hand. The trick of Short Stack play is to consider fold equity, which is the chance that someone will fold a hand because they do not wish to engage you for the raise size that you have made. At 10BB you have a good chunk of fold equity, as your stack dwindles to 6BB's or less people are more prone to calling your all-in pushes with a wider range of hands. The range of hands that they will call you with expands in proportion to decline of your stack up until the point that your stack is no longer considered a threat and is not given much thought. You do not want to get to this point so you must play your small stack aggressively if you hope to be successful.

A good example of excellent short stack play came at my expense in the second tourney on Saturday. I was short stacked with about 8BB's. Lisa limped in with AQ, I shoved all-in with 99. Lisa at this point asked what are the blinds (actually she should have known this with out asking, but that is another topic). She then verbally went through her thought process. She said "you are on a short stack so I know you might be shoving with something that might not be that good. I call". That reasoning, even though she started the hand a little behind, is what won her the hand. This is the kind of reasoning that should be going through your head when you are the Short Stack or have to make a decision when pondering if you should play a hand with a player who is on a short stack.