[LiveInPeace]

It becomes more important to know your opponents strategies in a short handed game. This is because as the number of opponents dwindle the strategies used against you are not averaged quite as much across many players. Across fewer players singificant changes in style by individual players have more impact on the game and the strategy you should adopt.

Generally short handed games need to be played more aggressively. This means that while you may find yourself bet into about the same proportion of the time as before (reduced opponent count balances increased bet frequency from them) you'll still need to come out betting a higher proportion of the time too. That is the biggest difference of all in betting style and it means that you should normally reduce your starting hand requirements for both limping and raising. Whereas before you might only raise with hands like AAxx KKxx AKQJ now you can sensibly consider raising with hands like KQJ9 or even 889T.

The nuts do become rarer in short handed games. You'll still see the nuts reasonably often 6 handed (particularly nut straights and sometimes nut flushes) but down to 2 or 3 handed two pair/middle straight/second or third nut flush all start to look very strong. Clearly these are still dangerous hands to hold and they still need to be considered carefully when facing any raise.

Some people think position is more important short handed but if I had the choice of always playing from the button 6max or 10max then I would choose 10max. One reason being that there is much greater likelihood of there being a re-raise into my nut hand before the action even reaches me. I'd much rather have position on 9 opponents than just 5. That has to be worth more, if you ask me.