Shorthanded Games

There always seems to come a time, usually late in the evening, when a few players leave and the game has to be played shorthanded if it is to be played at all. Sometimes players stick around and play fivehanded for a while if they think new players will drift into the game, but when games get down to five players or fewer, more often than not the effect is usually a daisy chain of folks racking up their chips and heading toward the cashier's cage.

And I'm usually standing there like a dummy, imploring players to stick around and play shorthanded, telling them the game is more fun that way, but they seldom listen to me. In fact, I don't think I've ever been able to sell my opponents on playing threehanded or heads up, although on occasion I've been able to convince them to stick around with four or five players. I've never understood why there's a mass exodus when a game is shorthanded. After all, most players look for any excuse to play more hands in a full game, so much so that they delude themselves into thinking it's OK to cold-call two bets with a hand like 9-8, just because they'd rather play than throw their cards away.

So, why not play shorthanded? After all, you get to play a lot more hands. When you're heads up, lots of holdings that would be clear folds at a full table are raising hands against one or two opponents.

Shorthanded play is fun. It's also a different game entirely, and there are a few new rules of the road that most players need to learn when they play against four or fewer opponents for the first time.

In many shorthanded games, you tend to find yourself playing heads up by the flop, and when that happens, poker is more of a mind game than it is with seven players seeing the flop and the cards dictating what happens next for you and your opponents. In shorthanded games, the cards often don't matter as much as one's ability to understand playing styles and adjust to them.

Shorthanded Play

Before the Flop

Some players become extremely aggressive when the game is heads up, and they'll raise with almost anything – or even nothing at all. When this happens, your strategy becomes classic judo; you want to play a bit passively and allow your opponent to bet into you. But later on in the hand – and later on usually means on the turn, when the betting limits double – you'll often have to shed your passivity by betting, raising, and reraising for value when do you have a hand. Your betting pattern, as a result, is often: check-call, check-call, check-raise, bet. If you've got a very aggressive opponent and an ominous-looking card appears on the river, but it is really a card you like, you might get to check-raise a second time if your opponent thinks the portentous river card may cause you to release your hand to his bet. When that happens, you're gonna love it.

This may sound radical, but it's really the same way you'd play against a habitual bluffer in a full game. When you have a hand you think is better than anything he might call with, you can check to induce a bluff, and snap it off with a call or a raise. Well, you're doing the same thing here. The only difference is that in a shorthanded game, everyone is a habitual bluffer – the blinds come around rapidly when games are fivehanded or shorter – and you can't sit there folding hand after hand until you pick up a big one. You've got to gamble a bit, and bluff at any dead money in the pot whenever you think you have a chance of stealing it.

A strategy that's dramatically different needs to be used against players who are cautious, weak, or overly tight. And in a shorthanded game, anyone who plays what would otherwise be a sound, tight, or cautious strategy in a full game – being very selective, for instance, about starting hands, throwing away marginal hands, and waiting for very good cards is playing overly tight in a shorthanded game – will have a hard time winning in a shorthanded game unless the deck runs over him. Against this kind of opponent, you'll need to be the one who is aggressive by almost always betting at the pot when you're heads up. After a while he might get tired of your abuse and begin to call more frequently, but unless he's thought about shorthanded play, he's likely to call you with hands that are OK in full games but poor in shorthanded play. People, after all, are creatures of habit, and if they don't understand how hand values change when play is shorthanded, they are unlikely to make the proper adjustments.

Shorthanded Play on the Flop

When the game is short, you'll look at more flops. If you haven't figured it out yet, big cards are a real blessing when you're shorthanded, while midrange connectors – the kind that play well against a large field – are toast. Playing shorthanded is not much different than playing in a full game when you're in late position and everybody has folded to the last few players, even though card bunching does not come into play. In a full game, when everyone passes to the last few players, you can figure that all of them were dealt small cards, so there's more of a chance that late-position players will hold big cards. In a short game, the distribution of cards is more random.

Not only will you look at more flops in a shorthanded game, you'll also attack more of them. In fact, any playable hand is a raising hand when the game is short. Any ace – even A-X, which is usually a real dog in a full game – can become a raising hand in a short game, and so can a king with a good kicker, and any queen figures to be above average. When you're the one under attack in the blind, you have to call with most playable hands and reraise with hands like 8-8, 9-9, and big cards as weak as A-10, to make your opponents pay for raising your blind with a hand like A-3, or even with a highwayman's hand like 9-8.

One issue most shorthanded players never get around to thinking about is that it's much easier to guess an opponent's hand when you're heads up. Like you, he almost instinctively will begin to play bigger cards. So, if a ragged flop comes and just the two of you are contesting it, there's a pretty good chance the flop missed him as badly as it missed you. If your opponent is not aware of that, you can bet as if you've got a pair, and your foe is put in the unenviable position of having to guess while you're the guy with the whip at his back.

In the next issue we'll look at shorthanded play on the turn and the river. In the meantime, if you get into a shorthanded game, stick around. You may find yourself in a terrific situation, especially if you're playing against weaker opponents who haven't figured out how to play when the game is short.

My newest book, Internet Poker: How to Play and Beat Online Poker Games, is available at www.ConJelCo.com, and all of my books can be found at major bookstores and online at www.Amazon.com.