Short Stack Strategy – Tips for Playing a Small Stack

Playing a short stack is something that very few tournament poker players enjoy. After all, the optimal tournament strategy is to stay ahead of the blinds and other players by accumulating chips for survival.

However, no Limit Texas Holdem is a game with filled with mistakes, suckouts, bad beats, bad cards, and bad flops. Because of this, being on the short stack is a frequent occurrence in tournaments. As a beginner, making some simple strategy adjustments to your short stack play will help you improve your results in these types of situations. Let’s take a look at a few pointers for improving your short stack play.

Push or fold: The point of no return

There comes a time in a no limit tournament when you can no longer afford to make a standard raise without pot committing yourself. For example, let’s say that the blinds are 100/200 and you find yourself sitting on 1200 chips. A standard raise is about 3-4 times the blinds, or 600-800 chips. Making such a raise commits half or more of your chips to the pot, and gives you decent pot odds to continue with just about anything post-flop.

This time is sometimes referred to as “the point of no return”. It’s the time when you should be narrowing your decisions down to two primary options… pushing all in, or folding.

So how do I know if I’ve hit this “point of no return”?

In general, when making a raise (or calling one) puts a large percentage of your chips into the pot, you have hit this point. There is no magic number, or specific formula for this. Ask ten poker players this question, and they might give you ten different answers.

Speaking personally, I typically consider myself at this point when I have less than or equal to 8-10 big blinds. Once I hit this point in the tournament, I make some strategy adjustments which I will outline in the next section.

Helpful resource:
Dan Harrington, in his book “Harrington on Holdem, Vol. 2”, describes a system for determining this point. The system walks through in detail the strategy adjustments Dan suggests making with various chip stack sizes. He lays out a series of “zones”, which are determined by your stack in relation to the blinds. This book is worth a look for any serious tournament player. We have a review of his book on our best poker books page.

Short Stack Strategy Adjustments

Failing to make strategy adjustments when your chip stack starts to dwindle can be a costly mistake. Let’s go over some important ways you should change your style when you’re faced with a short stack.

1. Don't make speculative calls
   Limping with low pocket pairs (to catch a set), or suited connectors is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. One, you’re taking the risk of being re-raised and having to make the decision of calling for all your chips with 78 of spades, or pocket fours. Not a good spot to be in. Second, you will only hit your set or flush/straight draw a small percentage of the time, and you don’t have enough chips to make it worth your while when you do hit.
   
   
2. Don’t raise with a hand you’re not willing to take to showdown
   Because of your short stack, you don’t have the luxury of raising, then folding when the flop misses you. You will be getting good pot odds to call post flop with all but the worst of hands, so folding post flop is a mistake. Don’t waste your time with mediocre hands like QT, A9, etc. You will find yourself wasting quite a few chips on hands that are frequently outkicked.
   
   
3. When you fire your final shot, make sure it’s a bullet, and not a pellet.
   You want to take a shot at stealing the blinds, and/or doubling up before you have almost no chips left. Don’t let yourself get blinded down to nothing before taking a stab at the pot. Even if that means doing it with less than premium hands. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, raising all in with 1200 chips into a 300 chip pot is not nearly as likely to draw a call as doing so with only 600 chips. When you don’t have many chips left, your hope is that you can steal the blinds. If you don’t have enough chips to scare people away, you certainly cannot accomplish this goal. Second, doubling up, only to still have only 3-4 times the blinds is pretty much pointless.
   
   
4. Unless you have premium cards, make sure you’re first into the pot
   When you consider pushing all in as a short stack, you should make sure two factors are present. 1) You have very good cards, or 2) you’re the only one in the pot so far. Remember that if you still have a fair amount of chips, and your table image is not that of a maniac, players will need a better than average hand to warrant a call. This is why you should always make sure you’re alone in the pot before shoving in to steal the blinds. Force the players behind you to make the decision. If there is already one or two limpers in the pot, you’re more likely to get a call, which is a bad thing when you want to steal the blinds with two random cards.

The situation you’re NOT looking for

Many new players think that the situation you’re looking for as the short stack is to get into a 3 or 4-way pot and “quadruple up”. They see a raise, and a re-raise to them and they think “this is my chance, Queen Ten is good enough”. However, this is not the ideal situation for a short stack. In situations such as these, your hand is often way behind. Your chances of actually winning a showdown are relatively slim. You’re far better off waiting for a pot with no players in it to try and steal the blinds.

Final thoughts

While nobody likes playing on the short stack, learning to play it correctly is a necessary evil of tournament poker. Making these few simple adjustments to your short stack game can yield some positive results to your tournament placement, and should have you making better use of the chips you have in front of you.