Playing an Extremely Short Stack – Part 5

This column continues a series of columns on playing an extremely short stack in tournaments. One of the most important skills a tournament player can develop is the ability to make the correct decisions with and against extremely short stacks. The reason this skill is important for tournament players, and relatively unimportant for cash game players, is because short stack situations occur very frequently in the crucial stages of tournaments, starting just before the money and continuing to the end of the final table. Thus they have a huge impact on your tournament results.

Note that these are really two skills. Playing with a short stack and playing against a short stack. In this column, I will address the latter. This also can be broken into several situations. A short stacked opponent goes all-in.

Everyone folds up to you. You have to decide if it is right to fold, call or raise.
One or more players call in front of you, and again you have to decide which of those three actions to take.

Lastly, someone raises the short stack and again you have to decide which of those three actions to take.

The easiest situation to analyze is one where you are last to act and have to decide whether to call the short-stack’s all-in bet. Usually this happens when you are the big blind. (Occasionally, you may have limped or made a small raise, before he went all-in. In both these cases, you usually have a reasonable hand and calling is fairly automatic.) If his stack is extremely short, your call should be virtually automatic. He has no fold equity. The tougher decisions arise when your opponent still has some fold equity, even though he is already short stacked. This usually occurs when he has three to eight big blinds left.

When this type of situation occurs, you must keep in mind the fact that your opponent is pretty desperate. His range might include some very weak hands. Even a tight player will raise under the gun with hands like J-9 suited or A-5 offsuit when he is short stacked. So far all this discussion has been rather general. Now let’s examine some specific situations. There is a 100 ante. The blinds are 400-800. You are in the big blind with a large stack. A middle position opponent goes all-in. We will look at three typical amounts he might have 2,000, 4,000 and 6,000.

In the first case, there is 4,100 in the pot and it costs you only 1,200 to call. Even if he has pushed with a reasonably strong range (say top 40 percent) you should call with any two cards. For example, 7-2 off will win 30 percent of the time against a top 40 percent range. Your call will gain about 400 on average. Note also that if you are in the money or even close to the money bubble, eliminating a player is very good for you. Since you have a large stack, the 30 percent chance of knocking someone out without risking a lot of your stack cannot be passed up. Notice that he waited too long to go all in. He no longer has any fold equity.

In the second case, there is 6,100 in the pot, but now it costs 3,200 to call. Winning 30 percent of the time is no longer enough. Your opponent still has some fold equity. You can’t call with your worst hands any more. Eliminate unsuited hands with bad deuces and treys. Hands like 6-2 and 8-3 offsuit are no longer calling hands. Much as you’d like to call and knock out your opponent, you just can’t play complete garbage. A minimum calling hand should be something like 7-6 offsuit.

In the third case, there is 8,100 in the pot, but now it cost you 5,200 to call. I hope after reading the columns in this series you aren’t asking yourself why he raised so much – seven and one-half big blinds. Once he elects to play his hand, he is pot committed. It would be an incredibly bad play to raise to 2,400 and then fold to a reraise of 3,600. A player trying to be tricky with aces might attempt to trap some callers or create a bigger pot. This kind of maneuver sometimes succeeds, but a small raise from a short-stacked, knowledgeable player looks suspicious and may backfire two ways. Obviously it is now easier for someone to call leading him to losing a pot he could have won. Since his play was so strange, he may also find that someone who would have called an all-in reads the situation correctly and folds to the smaller raise.

The fact that it costs so much to call, has given your opponent a lot of fold equity. You are already in the territory where knowing your opponent is very important. If he will shove with any two cards, you should call with two cards. If he restricts himself to the top 40 percent as above, you can call with the top 60 percent or so. Lastly, if he feels his stack is big enough to be a little cautious, such as shoving with only the top 25 percent, you must be even more careful. Perhaps just call with the top 40 percent of your hands.

The 40 percent range has been mentioned a lot in this column. Typically this includes all pairs, except 3-3 and 2-2. All suited aces and kings. Q-4 suited plus, J-7 suited plus, 10-7 suited plus, 9-7 suited plus, and 8-7 suited plus. Unsuited hands in this range are A-3 plus, K-7 plus, Q-8 plus, J-8 plus and 10-9 plus. ♠

Steve “Zee” Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A — Nice Guy Eddie’s at Houston and Doc Holliday’s at 9th Street — in New York City.