Theory Post: Fighting Shortstackers - Read Skiers Post First

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Good short stackers are like that guido with the gelled up spikey hair in the club. They're pulling mad tail and we're all jealous and angry at them. Despite their apparent "doucheness," pretty birds with fake chesticles are still swarming to them. See Exhibit A Below.


Caption: Kurosh and his shorties (haha get it?)


I initially made a post that pretty much stated: in order to beat shortstackers, you have to understand how they play.

I even made an excel file that had EV calculations for different situations from the Shortstackers perspective hoping you all could benefit and figure out what adjustments you should make.

By doing this, I also kind of forgot that I'm giving aspiring shortstackers the chance to learn way more than they should know about it... If you're too dumb to do the math out yourself, then you don't deserve to have my spreadsheet and you probably won't be a winning short stacker anyways.

My intention was to help you crush those guidos and steal the bitties for yourself - not create more gangster wannabes.

So.. I'm going to post things you should be doing as a fullstacker without giving too much explanation or math behind it for the fear of giving anything away to the short stackers.

You'll just have to trust my math, because I'm smart. Many of these have been stated before.


1) Raise to a lower amount with short stackers left to act. Instead of opening to pot on the button with a shortstacker left, try opening to 2.5x[/b]

If we open to 4x, it increases the amount they win when we fold. This means they can shove more often and more profitably against us because we aren't going to be adjusting our calling ranges of their shoves according to how much we raise to preflop.

2) Don't be afraid to play post flop with them. Shortstackers are not immune to tilt or pulling stupid bluffs or putting in their chips poorly. They won't be as good postflop as you 99% of the time.

3) Understand that they will try to pull some cheap bluffs in pots. "The fear of future bets" theory. Conversely, when you call one of these cheap bets - you signal to the shortstack that you are willing to keep going with the hand and they will give up often.

4) Adjust your calling ranges of shortstack shoves. This is simple enough, but some people just don't get it. The more a shortstack shoves, the lighter you can be calling.

5) Manipulate Bet Sizes: Against bad shortstackers, you don't need to just shove when you have a good hand. Chunk the bets and trick them into calling.

6) Shortstackers profit does not come solely from when you make a loose call against them. Think about it...

In the end, remember that shortstackers are profitable based on the imbalance of stack sizes and lack of adjustments on our part in regards to calling ranges, opening sizes, and opening frequency.

Again, I know this has all been said before, but it's nice to have it in one place.

I'd rather have this out there than my excel file or nothing at all so take it for what it's worth.

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Here's a little bit of math.

100NL game for the sake of numbers.

We open to 4$ and shortstacker shoves. Lets say we call 50% of the time and have 40% equity.

Shortstackers EV will be 5.2$

If we open to 2.5$ in the same situation, shortstackers ev is 4.45$

The inherent problem that we encounter is that when we make some of these adjustments to take advantage of the shortstacks, we leave ourselves more vulnerable to be exploited by other fullstacks.

On that same thought, I start to question whether or not a lot of these adjustments are worth it - i.e. are we sacrificing too much e.v. against the fullstacks to make our play more optimal against the shortstacks.

I don't think you need to totally adjust your play, but blending in some of these strategies will help your winrate a little bit.

In the end, you just have to understand that play a shortstack well is just another feasible strategy that can be profitable in online poker. There's a reason why there's 20 bad shortstacks for every 1 good shortstacker.

It's not easy to play optimally. Anyone who thinks so is just fooling themselves.

[Professorn]

very well written, ty.
I haven't read the skiers post but gonna search for it now. unfortunately I am to drunk to be able to make a good post right now, hopefully someone else has the effort to.