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Playing an Extremely Short Stack – Part 6

by Steve Zolotow |  Published: Oct 03, 2012

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Steve ZolotowFirst, let me begin with a brief recap of some points from previous columns in this series. Fold equity is created by going all-in and winning an uncontested pot. If your stack becomes extremely short, you have little or no fold equity. This means you will need to beat one or more opponents often enough to have plus equity in these contended pots. You should make every reasonable effort to go all-in while you still have fold equity.

If you no longer have fold equity, you have an extremely short stack. The situation is already desperate and, it becomes correct to play increasingly weak hands. There is an old proverb which states that “desperate times call for desperate measures.” It is also sometimes phrased as “desperate men do desperate things.” The point is that you are forced to take some low percentage actions to avoid the terrible fate of blinding and anteing yourself to death. In simple mathematical terms, it is better to play a 4,000 pot that you have only a 30 percent chance to win (your equity is 1,200) than to wait and later play a 1,000 pot that you will win 80 percent (your equity is 800.)

One of the most important skills a tournament player can develop is the ability to make the correct decisions with and against short and 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. In cash games these decisions are less frequent, since players add chips, and less important, since they represent only a small percentage of your result.

We have discussed the tremendous importance of playing with and against short stacks and extremely short stacks in tournaments. A combination of mathematics, psychology and intuition is required to make good decisions. By intuition, I refer to table feel, not to some mysterious means of knowing what cards are coming. Table feel allows you to sense the strength of your opponent’s hands and their probable reactions to actions you might take. As if all of this were not complicated enough, there is one more crucial factor that hasn’t been discussed yet – bubbles. A bubble is a big jump in payout amount. The major bubble occurs when the next person eliminated will get nothing, but the player who avoids this immediate elimination by even one place will be in the money. Tournaments usually start playing “hand for hand” as the bubble approaches. This means that no table deals hand two until all tables have completely hand one, etcetera. The rule is in effect to prevent stalling. Were it not in place, a player could stall until someone was eliminated, breaking the bubble, and then return to playing a normal pace. If two players are eliminated on the same hand, they split the last place prize money.

It is a financial catastrophe to be eliminated on the wrong side of a major bubble. For example, at this year’s WSOP main event, the player eliminated in 667th got zero. The player who survived one more spot got $19,227. Advancing one spot was worth nearly twenty thousand dollars. How far would he have to go to gain another $19,227? All the way to 306th place! Let this sink in. Going from 667th to 666th was worth $19,227. Going from 666th to 306th was also worth $19,227. Clearly the bubble has a tremendous impact on strategy.

When discussing plays in a cash game, equity is a nearly perfect guide to decision making. If a play increases your equity, it is correct to make it. If it decreases your equity, you shouldn’t make it. Each chip is equivalent to the corresponding amount of money. Tournament play far from the bubble is relatively similar. Make plays that increase you chip stack equity. As the bubble approaches your chip stack equity begins to diverge from your actual dollar equity. Losing your last chip in 667th place was worth zero. Losing it in 666th place was worth $19,227. The player who survives all the way to final head’s up struggle, before losing his last chip in second place, will find that holding on to that chip (or chips) all that way was worth over five million dollars. Clearly, all chips are not created equal.

At the bubble, there are often several players with short and extremely short stacks. How should you play if you are one of these unfortunate players? As long as you can last more hands by folding than the others can, you should fold. A double up or even a triple up will not increase you equity by very much. Elimination will reduce your dollar equity to zero. At this point, someone always asks, “Are you saying it is right to fold aces?” Let’s examine a hypothetical situation from this year’s WSOP main event.

You don’t know what’s happening at other tables, but you expect that the shortest stack will go all-in at two or more other tables over the next two hands. At your table, there has been a bet by a large stack and a small all-in raise. This raise is so small that the big stack will certainly call. If you call all-in, you are in contention for a 20,000 chip main pot. If you fold, you are virtually certain to make the money, but will then have such are extremely short stack that you probably won’t go much farther. How does the math look?

Simplifying as much as possible, we see that folding is worth $19,227. Actually, there is some danger that all the other short stacks survive, so it might be worth a little less. On the other hand, you might reach the money and then win a few hands to advance to a higher payoff. Let’s say that folding into the money is worth $20,000. Calling and losing is worth zero, unless the elimination of another player on this hand allows you to split last place money. Since this will happen about half the time you lose, the loss is still worth $4,800. (Half the time you lose you will get half of about $19,000.) Winning guarantees $19,227 and leaves you with 20,000 in chips at a time when the average stack is over 300,000. Now your stack is big enough that a few wins will definitely allow you to advance to a bigger payout. Let’s say that additional equity is $8,000, so that this win will give you a total equity of $28,227. How often will aces beat your two opponents? It obviously depends on their hands, but two-thirds of the time is a good estimate. All this means that folding into the money is worth $20,000. Calling with aces is worth one-third of $5,000 and two-thirds of $27,227, which also equals almost $20,000. Based on these figures, it doesn’t matter mathematically whether you fold or call. Therefore if $20,000 means a lot to you, elect to fold into the money. If $20,000 would be useful, but not really life changing, then take a shot by calling. The important point to take home from all this discussion is that at the bubble, folding into the money is often your best choice. In the above example, a weaker hand, even queens or kings would have been a clear fold. ♠

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.