Head Games: The Pros Share How They Attack and Capitalize on Mistakes During Short-handed Tournament Play

Craig Tapscott: Can you share how your game changes in terms of when the table becomes short-handed and the specific things you are looking for to take advantage of? Perhaps give an example.

Jonathan Jaffe: When a table makes the move from full ring to short-handed play, I try to pay closer attention to my individual tablemates and their varied approaches to the shift in table size.

Before making adjustments to my opponents, my own game changes very little when a table moves to short-handed; I simply begin in either middle position or late position, depending on how short-handed the table is. The one slight preflop adjustment I will make is that, in general, I open slightly less from each position because there are fewer antes, making each steal marginally less valuable.

If there is one general thing I am looking to take advantage of when short-handed, it is playing against those opponents whose biggest weakness is post-flop play. These players often struggle with short-handed play, assuming it is deeper than 40 big blinds or so. When you are nine-handed, you don’t get nearly as many opportunities per hour where you should be playing a hand like K-8 offsuit or J-5 suited. When you are playing six-handed, or especially four-handed, these type of hands far outnumber the amount of pocket jacks or ace-king type hands you will be playing. Each player is going to be playing a much wider range, and that means you must account for a much wider range from your opponent. This is where the variables really pile up, and one chapter of a book (‘How to Play Ace-King’) won’t do the situation any justice.

Mark Herm: The number one thing I am doing is just opening wider than what I normally would. That’s the easiest and most important shift necessary with short-handed play. Other than that, it’s definitely important to up your frequencies of three and four-betting, but often this is table-dependent.

Playing at the World Series of Poker, it’s pretty easy to use common sense to characterize opponents and what their most likely frequencies will be, for instance three-bet bluffing. The 23-year-old kid to your left that can’t speak English well and has a scarf around his neck is probably shooting you up with bad hands as opposed to the 42-year-old WSOP jacket-wearing, card-protecting, American player.  

You see a lot of inexperienced guys get too out of line in six-max or just overcompensate by widening their ranges of hands they feel as though they “can’t fold” regardless of the amount of chips they have. Playing solid and just being a more experienced player will pay off in situations like this, but most importantly, trust your gut and don’t try to think about strategy. Nothing good has ever come to me by thinking about strategy. It is best to be present and as observant as possible, which allows your natural intuition as a poker player to do its thing. I will say it again—thinking is bad. 

Gavin Griffin: When the table becomes short-handed in a tournament, there are many adjustments to make, but some of those adjustments change based on how the players at your table are playing.

The first, and most obvious adjustment, one that is universal to all table conditions, is that you must play more hands. The blinds and antes come around faster, putting more pressure on your stack, causing you to get involved more often and find good spots to win chips. In addition to that, your opponents will be playing a wider range, thus forcing you to defend your blinds more often.

I remember when I finished second in the $1,500 Omaha Eight-or-Better (O/8) tournament at the World Series of Poker a couple of years ago, from about 27 players on in, people were making comment after comment about how I never folded my big blind to a raise as if that was a mistake I was making. It was an adjustment to the game of tournament Eight-or-Better as well as an adjustment to the fact that we were short-handed many points along the way.

In addition to playing more hands, you should be looking for specific tendencies to take advantage of amongst your opponents. Do you have someone at your table who folds their big blind too much? Raise them more often. Do you have someone who opens too frequently, but folds when three-bet? Three-bet them more often.

You can go even deeper than that. My two favorite types of players to target when playing short-handed are those that defend their big blind when raised and open raises when three-bet, but play a relatively fit or fold style post-flop. That means they are tending to give up more often than they should once they get to the flop. Flop or turn continuation bets can make you a ton of money against this type of player, since they’ll miss the flop so often and you have the initiative.

I was playing in a tournament recently with one of these players. He opened from middle position and I three-bet with 9-8 suited. He called and the flop came ace-high and mostly unconnected. He checked to me. I thought I could win if I bet here, but if I checked and he didn’t have an ace, he would check again on the turn and I could bet to win the pot then. It’s also how I would most likely play almost my entire range on a board like this. I checked, and he check-folded the turn. Knowing your opponents’ tendencies becomes so much more important when you’re playing short-handed, and this was a good example of how it paid off for me.

Craig Tapscott: When shifting gears during short-handed play, what are a few of the mistakes you see many players make and how do you capitalize on those mistakes?

Jonathan Jaffe: The most common mistake I tend to see short-handed is that players loosen up too much. Preflop they tend to three-bet and four-bet too often and, in general, they overvalue the positives of preflop aggression.

I try to imagine a six-handed table as a normal table where the first player to act is just the hijack+1 instead of under the gun. There will certainly be more three and four betting than at a nine-handed table, but I wouldn’t start playing cards I don’t usually play from a given position just because the table is now short-handed.

The most common mistakes I see post-flop also have to do with players being too aggressive. Short-handed play means a lot of late position versus late position versus blinds play. The product of this is wider hand ranges, which means a much more complex range analysis. This can be a bit overwhelming for a lot of less experienced players and often leads to illogical decisions such as: weak call downs that beat very few holdings, light value bets that target less losing hands than winning hands, and bluffs that are not representing enough (if any) credible hands.

Mark Herm: Some guys are not comfortable playing a wide range of hands, which is often the optimal playing style short-handed.  Although they don’t really know how to play correctly, they usually can sense that they are being outplayed and start to get heated that you are winning most hands and they can’t seem to win one. So in reaction to that, they often spaz and decide to make a stand at an inopportune time.  

There’s also the opposite end of the spectrum. You get the guys that think they need to play every hand because it’s six-max, when actually you can get away with playing overall solid as long as your not being a stone nit. I’d even go as far to say you could be a nit profitably if your table was spaz city and you were all very deep. Even if your table is all psychos, you still can’t afford to be playing super tight if you are fairly short-stacked, because your implied odds of gaining a large amount of big blinds in one pot isn’t quite there, as it would be if you were, say 50 big blinds deep.  

Gavin Griffin: The biggest mistake that people make when they shift gears is a theoretical one and is often not completely evident until you analyze their play a little deeper. Everyone has heard that you’re supposed to play more hands and be more aggressive when you play short-handed, but they haven’t necessarily thought about it in a constructive way. This leads to haphazard attempts at playing more aggressively. Since they don’t have a plan, they often find themselves in situations they’re not ready for and, consequently, they don’t know how to react to them.

Therein lies the problem. If you don’t have a plan, you will always feel out of touch with your situation, resulting in poor decisions and poorly conceived plays. It is, of course, okay to have a plan and deviate from that plan based on the actions of your opponent. But having a plan in the first place and considering what you might do based on your presumptions of the most likely actions your opponent will respond with will have you on the right track towards playing well short-handed. ♠

Jonathan Jaffe has accumulated more than $2 million dollars in career tournament earnings. In 2014 he won the WPT Montreal Main Event. Jaffe is also a full time poker coach and can be reached at [email protected] or on facebook.

Mark Herm made online poker history on July 13th, 2008 when he won two Sunday major tournaments on the same day. In 2010, he won the PokerStars Sunday million for $239,000. Herm has more than $5 million in combined online and live career tournament cashes.

Gavin Griffin is a long time professional poker player who has amassed almost $5,000,000 in tournament earnings. He has been a contributor to CardPlayer magazine since 2012 and spends most of his time at home with his two sons.