[Bob T.]

Ok every once in a while there is a post that goes something like this:

I had such and such a hand, there was some preflop action, then there was a flop and some flop action. I ended up going all in, because I was shortstacked. Then this and that happened, did I do OK?

And somewhere, someone always says, 'well your first mistake was playing shortstacked.'

Well, what ticks me off, is that I don't think that that comment is very well thought out, in fact, I think that saying that 'playing shortstacked is a mistake', is a mistake.

First, I am going to say that for your table image, buying in for a healthy amount, and maintaining a healthy amount in front of you is a good thing. I played a session a long time ago with a 2+2er, and when he sat down he asked me how I was doing, I told him I had flopped two sets, and an OESFD, and hadn't won a hand yet, so with not too much arithmatic, he should have figured that I was stuck. But I still had a little over a rack in front of me, and I sat for a couple of hours with somewhere near that amount. When he wrote a trip report about our adventure, he said that he thought that I must have been about even all night. That was probably just based on the impression that I had chips in front of me, because I had told him that I had had some bad luck. Clearly, having a healthy amount of chips in front of you gives you the impression of being a healthy player.

On the other hand, having a shortstack in front of you gives either the impression that you are on life support, or are scared money. Right? And those things are so bad, that you have to avoid them? Maybe??

Well, I think No. I think instead that it is just an adjustment that you have to make. Just like you make an adjustment when your opponents are playing short.

For what it's worth, Barry Greenstein has said that he thinks that playing a short stack can turn a breakeven player into a significant winner, and he recommends buying in as short as possible, and says that he does that when he plays in the 2000/4000 game. Additionally, I think Mike Caro wrote that the best size stack would be one small bet, so you could make your first preflop decision, and get whatever odds you would get on the first round of betting, and then as your opponents forced each other out, your pot equity would grow, until you equity was larger than your pot odds for your initial investment. And one of my friends has won a significant amount of money by buying in short in online NL games.

Anyway, when you are playing short, the game changes a little bit, and if you make the correct adjustments, I think that you can profit from them. These adjustments also apply when you are playing against a player who is shortstacked, because when he goes allin, you are effectively allin for that hand, even though you have a lot of chips left in your stack.

The first thing you have to realize, is that when someone is shortstacked, the likelyhood of the hand going to showdown, is a lot higher. That means that whoever has the best hand at the end, is going to win the hand. Not who can make the cleverest bet, or play. So whenever you enter the pot, you need to consider how well your hand is going to showdown. As much as you love 97 suited, this might not be the time to play it, but on the other side of the coin, Ax suited might be okay, because you have an Ace which might win you a showdown.

The second factor that you have to consider, and it leads you to playing the hands which will win showdowns, is that the implied odds are going to be reduced. You can't make a lot of money after you make your flush or straight, because someone is going to be allin already, and there won't be any betting left to do. Again, 97 suited might get there, but you aren't going to recover enough on the back end to pay for the times that it misses. So this favors hands that have reverse implied odds, ( because no money will be going in on the implied odds streets) so you want big pairs, big cards, and already made hands like pairs. Similarly, if a player is almost allin, usually other players cooperate with him to get him allin, and if he has a reverse implied odds hand, his entire investment happens before the flop, and before the reverse implied odds kick in. Or maybe put another way, when someone goes all in, someone elxe calls him, because he doesn't have to pay anymore to see the showdown.

On the other hand, it doesn't mean that you can't play draws, but you just have to calculate your odds of getting there, against the pot odds. It's like an automatic freecard play. You know what the maximum investment is, and you know how many card you get to see, so you get to decide whether or not the pot odds are right, and you don't have to worry about the implied odds.

Finally, because an allin hand can't fold, it reduces the options that your opponents have. They can't bluff, because thay are going to have to show down a winner to claim the pot, so they have to play more straightforwardly, and this takes away some of the problems of playing against a tricky or skillful player. If you have say one small bet, and if you call it, you are getting 8-1, then a lot of hands become playable, because you would need only three outs each on the flop and river to call that bet, but if you had a bigger stack, you couldn't call, because you needed 17 to 1 to justify chasing the same hand if you weren't going to be all in.

Anyway, by playing shortstacked, you simplify your decisions, you reduce the effect of implied odds, you make your opponents play more straighforwardly, and you have a better chance of taking your hand to a showdown, which you have taken into consideration when you decided to play.