A situation came up in the $2,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em event at the
World Series of Poker that doesn't get much attention in various texts and strategy discussions, and is one that I believe many players play very poorly. Fortunately for me, I spend way too much time thinking about odd situations in poker and how those situations may play out differently. I find that if I've thought about unique situations in advance, it gives me an advantage when I'm faced with those (or similar) situations in the future.
The particular situation I'm referring to for this column is that of the extremely short stack, which I define as two or three big blinds. That's enough chips that you have a little bit of time to pick a hand to play, but not enough that you have any real fold equity against other players. Most texts don't cover this stack size, because you should never really get there. You always should be putting yourself in a situation to either double up or bust out before you ever get down to two or three big blinds.
So, why am I discussing it? Well, sometimes the situation arises, and it's out of your control. For instance, you may end up losing against an all-in stack in a big confrontation, leaving yourself with only a few big blinds, or you could even find yourself short-stacked when the blinds suddenly get raised and you were short beforehand, although in that situation you probably should have been aware of the blinds moving up ahead of time and acted accordingly.
Short-stack play is almost always about proper push/fold strategy, and about picking good spots to put all of your chips in the middle, often counting on fold equity to help you win a lot of pots without showdowns. Playing an extremely short stack, on the other hand, revolves around two key words: dead money. When you're an extremely short stack, people won't fold against you because the price they're getting to call is just too good, and you don't have enough chips to make them fold. So, the key is finding spots with a mathematical edge and dead money in the pot. Let's look at an example from the
World Series of Poker to illustrate the point.
In this particular hand, I had A-8 offsuit in the big blind, and $575 in chips left after posting the big blind with $100-$200 blinds. An early-position player limped in for $200, and then T.J. Cloutier, from middle position, reraised to $800. After that, Joe Udine (a very strong Internet player) made it $2,000 to go. Everyone else folded around to me. Now, obviously, I know I'm not ahead. T.J. hasn't been getting out of line and Joe is never getting out of line with the second raise. But, there's $200 in dead money from the early-position limper (assuming that he doesn't call), and T.J., with $6,000 in chips total, is either going to fold or reraise push, which will likely leave me heads up with either Joe or T.J.
Doing some quick math, that means there is a small blind, a big blind, and a limper in dead money, making $500. Then, there's T.J.'s raise to $800, of which I can win a maximum of $775 (my chip count at the beginning of the hand), and Joe's reraise to $2,000, of which I can win a maximum of $775. That means that as long as I get heads up most of the time, I will be putting in $575 to win $2,050, odds of nearly 4-1. A-8 offsuit is certainly behind here, but unless someone has exactly A-A, I'm much better than a 4-1 underdog, and often figure to have three outs and be roughly a 2.5-1 underdog heads up. Even in the event that I'm called by two players, as long as I'm not up against A-K and a pair of eights or better, I'm not in terrible shape, and probably am getting at least the correct price to pay.
In the actual hand, T.J. reraised and Joe folded. T.J. had A-K and I spiked my 8 on the flop to rake a nice pot and get back into contention with $2,625 after the hand. It was one of those situations in which I'm never ahead, but the addition of so much dead money in the pot, and the fact that I was extremely short-stacked, created a unique circumstance in which I was getting a great price to call with the second-best hand.
Eric "Rizen" Lynch is a professional poker player who is well-known for his impressive online results. Read Eric's analysis on his blog (rizenpoker.blogspot.com), and check out his instructional videos, available at PokerXFactor.com.
