Shortcuts to Shorthanded Success

Hey, yo! JV here, still toiling away in the sitcom salt mines of Mother Russia, where most of my poker play has been online, and shorthanded. I love shorthanded hold'em, because not only do I get to play a ton of hands and see a ton of flops, I'm actually playing incorrectly if I don't. Mike Caro once said, "Whenever I see a nine-handed poker table, I think, 'That's three good poker games waiting to break out.'" If you've never experienced the truth of this, please join me now on a visit to Shorthanded Land. If you're an action junkie like me, you'll find it a certain sort of poker paradise.



If you're used to full-table play, when you make the transition to shorthanded play, you'll need to make six key strategic adjustments:



1. Pay more attention: In a full ring game, you can sometimes afford to let your mind drift, especially if it's the sort of game in which winning basically boils down to, "When you get the goods, bet the goods." Shorthanded success comes not from waiting for big tickets but from deciphering your foes' approaches to the game and making appropriate adjustments. So, play shorthanded with riveted focus or don't play at all.



2. Detect patterns: In a full ring game, the sheer number of players involved makes it difficult to detect meaningful patterns of play – and especially difficult to find situations in which those patterns can be exploited. In shorthanded play, though, with everyone taking such swiftly repeating turns at the big blind, small blind, button, and so on, players who fall into predictable patterns – routinely failing to defend their blinds, for example, or raise from the button every time – will quickly become prey.



3. Crank your aggressiveness way up: This is the most important adjustment to make shorthanded. Since most of the time no one has much of a hand in a shorthanded game, you want to create situations in which you can win pots with or without a hand. That's called taking control, and sheer brute aggressiveness is the straw that stirs this particular drink. As you know, conventional full-handed poker wisdom calls for a selective-aggressive approach to the game. Well, shorthanded is just like that – but without the selective part!



4. Get ready for the ride: Considering just how much more frequently you take the blinds shorthanded – not to mention the ones you attack – you know that you're going to be involved in a lot more pots, which means that your stack will rise and fall more steeply and swiftly than it would in a tame and timid full ring game. Shorthanded play is a roller coaster – sometimes an extreme one. In the name of mental toughness, you have to strap yourself in for the ride. In other words, be prepared or be not there.



5. Acknowledge superior play: In a full ring game, weaker players can evade stronger ones just by folding a lot and waiting for big tickets or good trap situations. Shorthanded, there's no place to hide. If you're in a game in which the other players are running all over you, you need to run away. There's no shame in this. The only shame comes from staying in a game that you know you can't beat until your money's all gone and they make you go away.



6. Play the players: No-limit hold'em has been called "a game of people played with cards." Shorthanded play is like that, only more so. There are countless times when the question isn't whether you have a hand, but whether your foe does, and whether he can be driven off the pot if he does not. We all know that poker is based on what beats what, but in shorthanded hold'em, it's much more a case of who beats whom.



So, what sort of starting hands should you be looking for in shorthanded play? I'm tempted to say, "Any two will do," because oftentimes the will to bet is all that matters. While it's not quite as simple as that, hand-strength minimum requirements fall as a function of the number of players in the game. Here's why. On average, one starting hold'em hand out of five will contain either an ace or a pair. This means that in a full ring game, an average of two players will have "real" hands, and if you aren't one of them, you can comfortably assume that you're beat, and you can fold. In a shorthanded setting, though, the odds are good (and the shorter the game, the better the odds) that "nobody's got nothing." With this in mind, you can look favorably on hands like K-Q, J-10 suited, and bad aces. In a context in which nobody's got nothing, these hands – plus pairs and good aces, of course – become musts to play.



Likewise, when you start looking at flops, you're going to be looking for weaker hits than you would in a full-handed game. Hitting the flop shorthanded means hitting top pair/no kicker, middle pair/good kicker, or even a naked bottom pair. You'd hesitate going to war with these holdings in a 10-way game, but shorthanded, they're worth backing with your bucks. Conversely, your draws go down in value shorthanded, because there are fewer players to pay you off when you hit.

In terms of image and playing style, how you approach the shorthanded game is up to you. As in any poker game, the image that's most in harmony with your true nature is the one you'll be able to sell most effectively. That said, shorthanded games are supercharged games, and there's really no place in them for weak, cautious, timid play, either for image or for real. Your goal should always be to control the action with raises and reraises, so if you find that you're generally the one putting in the last bet, you're probably in good shape. Conversely, the more you find yourself calling along, the more at risk you're likely to be.



Finally, there's this: Most people don't know how to play shorthanded hold'em. They bring their full-handed wait and see mentality to shorthanded play – where it really doesn't work very well. So, skill yourself up in this variant of poker, adopt its core philosophy – not wait and see but swoop and pummel – and you can be the boss of the small table, which is a very profitable role to play. At the end of the day, shorthanded play is a different breed of cat. Patience is punished, not rewarded. Betting strength and hand strength don't correlate. And the single most effective playing style is attentive bully. Master that style, and you'll find that shorthanded hold'em can mean significant green for you.



John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series and the new poker novel Under the Gun, in bookstores now. He resides in cyberspace at vorza.com, and blogs the world from somnifer.typepad.com. John Vorhaus' photo: Gerard Brewer.