Short Stacking Strategy Guide: Lesson 5

Lesson 5: A two-street game can be powerful

For the most part, it is correct not to play the two street game. However, sometimes a 2-street game can bring down havoc upon your enemies. For this, I’d like to look at an example from the book Kill Everyone. On p. 99, they start a section “Big Pushes on the Flop.” Picture this, pot is 1800 on the flop and it’s heads-up. The first to act is the small blind with 5400. The small blind pushes alli-n on As7h2c flop. What should the other player call with? If the latter player has a range of 22+, A2s+, A5+, K9+, QT+, J9s+, T8s+, 97s+, 86s+, 75s+, 64s+, 54s+, it’s +EV for the small stack to push any two cards if the later player needs AT+ to call. Of course, that is an extreme scenario involving any two cards verse a pretty wide range that doesn’t call lite. The key here is that this same concept can be used to exploit certain players. Some players just nit up post flop. How hard is it to push two to three times the pot all-in on the flop when one catches any part of it (one-pair, OESD, flush draw, even an over card and inside straight draw) and put the pressure on lite callers?
Don’t pull this move too often, but it’s awful nice to mix in the bag of tricks. It works real well when you’ll pull the same move with AA preflop.

But, this gets at another point: know the equities of certain ranges on different types of flops. Trust me, some players will take shots at the shortstacker who clams up postflop. On the other hand, some full stacks clam up as well and are highly exploitable. If you see someone who folds to a flop bet 70%+ of the time, you know they have high standards for moving on in the hand. Of course, guys do goofy things when shorties get involved, so pay attention to see if they buck their normal playing style.

There are a myriad of examples that one can go through here. One cannot go through all of them. However, just study a few to get something of a feel for the equities.

Short Stacking Strategy Guide: Lesson 4

Lesson 4: Opening up in the Small Blind

Let’s start with SB vs. BB, 9.5bb left after posting the small

BB Call Range 28% or less: Push with any two cards

30%: Top 83%

35%: Top 61%

40%: 50%

50%: 43%

60%: 46% (it goes up past here)

Getting a read on what kind of player the BB is is important, because the correct push range differs greatly between 25% and 50% calling, although that’s certainly no easy task.

Now for the button, same as before, 10bb stack with blinds covering:

SB call 10%/BB call 15: Top 75%

15/15: Top 49%

15/20: 35%

20/20: 28%

20/25: 24%

25/25: 23%

25+/30+: 23%+

Top 23% is any ace, any pair, KJ, any two suited broadways, and T9/98s. So you should definitely be pushing these from the button at the bare minimum. To look up what “Top x%” is, use Pokerstove.

Now for the cutoff:

Button 10%/SB 10%/BB 10%: Top 27%

10/10/15: Top 20%

15/15/15: 14%

15/15/20: 14%

20/20/20: 14% and so on

Pushing with this somewhat wider range of hands is going to add greatly to your swings, since you’ll be playing more all-in pots with small edges/the worst hand, but rest assured that these are indeed profitable plays, not withstanding the rake. Many of these hands do horribly if called, but remember that 1.5bb is 15% of your stack, and you’re never that big an underdog unless you run into a big pair. These aggressive pushes will also give you more action on your early position shoves, which should of course be with premium hands.

This isn’t to say the open-pushing small blinds is the optimal solution though. It is optimal up to 13BBs. However, you will often be dealing with 20BBs. The issue is that most of you shorting will not be as good as your opponents at 400NL 6max and up. (There is a reason you’re shorting, right?) The loss of playing push/fold instead of small raise is minimal and might be none at all if your opponents can outplay you post-flop.

Short Stacking Strategy Guide: Lesson 3

Lesson 3: Hand ranges to play and responding to the 3-bet

I understand a desire to be told to play X,Y and Z UTG and X,Y and Z MP, but I’ve found it to be pretty pointless. Find any reasonable TAGish opening hand chart and just go with it.. There are numerous qualified guides out there.

Cutoff and button ranges are highly dependent on the players left to act. I’m sure you could just make a chart and go with it every time, but you’ll be giving up EV by not adjusting to exploit player tendencies.

There are a few adjustments that are really important however:

1) You need to adjust a bit so that your hands are better at going to and winning showdowns. This ties into discussions in Professional No Limit Holdem on hands to play with SPRs around 4.

2) You need to adjust a bit so that your hands stand a better chance of calling an all-in if someone 3-bets your opening raise.

Alltogether, just about any TAG opening range will be just fine. Just keep in mind the slight adjustments you should make.
Responding to the 3-bet:

OK, so you open and then the opponent 3-bets you preflop. Whether it’s more than your stack or not, you should respond as though it is a shove, because nearly any call on your behalf is a pot-commitment.

There is a really simple way to respond to this. It’s a simple math problem that is very much like things we’ve seen in the poker literature regarding MTTs.

For example, look at pages 206 through 213 in NLTAP by Sklansky and Miller–”Calling All-In Raises”. So, you should know what you have. You must estimate the range of hands your opponent would 3-bet. Then, it’s just a pot odds calculation to see if your hand has enough EV to call. Now, I’d suggest you use more breakdowns (both hand ranges and pot odd calculations) than Sklansky and Miller, but they set the perfect standard of what to look at and how to apply it. The only excitement is trying to accurately tease out the villain’s hand range.

Short Stacking Strategy Guide: Lesson 2

Lesson 2: Who says it has to be a two street game?

If you watch the competent shorties today, you’ll see very very few instances where they open for more than three times the big bilnd. Many open for 2.5 times and others only min-raise.

So, think about why one raises preflop?

1. For value
2. For isolation
3. To steal the blinds
4. To semi-bluff
5. For deception
6. To manipulate pot size

It cannot be overstated how important this stuff is.

The problem with opening up big is that other players can exploit the shortie by shoving 20 BBs in the middle just as the shortie does to the fullstacks in resteal situations.

However, the good news is the shortie can effectively open up for a smaller raise. For one, think implied odds. With fullstacks, one has to raise a decent amount to not allow other fullies to use the 5/10 rule against them. However, it is not near that important for a shortstack. If a shortstack has 20BBs and raises 2.5BB to open, he is already above and beyond 10% of his stack!

In addition, just think in terms of SPR (stack-to-pot ratio). A shortie raises to 2.5 and is called after starting with 20BBs. The stack is now 17.5 compared to a pot of 5 to 6. That is a very easy SPR to play. It’s quite easy to get all the money in if that is what the shorty wants to do. There is no rule that it should be all in on the flop. To play allin by time the flop betting is done means the shorty has to start with a ridiculously tight range in order to ensure that he will be way ahead even after the flop so often. With an SPR below 4, it shouldn’t be hard for the shorty to get it in, but it still allows some play after the flop.

All of this allows shorties to have dynamic ranges. It makes counter-plays much more difficult for competent fullies as they cannot be sure that the 876r flop missed the shorty. This allows the shorty to actually play poker and use blind steals, position, aggression, etc. Shortstacks limit the importance of position, but it doesn’t completely eliminate it.

For instance, by opening smaller, a shorty can effectively raise 25% and up on the button and follow up with 3/5 pot c-bets quite often.

If you do the datamines of the successful 6max shorties, you’ll see their stats are only slightly tighter than the normal TAG on general. Their hand range is still quite large.

Now, some will fear being ‘outplayed’ postflop. That is still an issue. We’ll get to some stuff on this in a later lesson. However, the shorty should familiarize her/himself with common equity calculations for hands v range on different types of flops. You’ll find that as long as you’re not atrocious, it’s tough to make that big of a mistake post-flop. After all, there are not many BBs in play and you should have some semblance of how to play poker-post flop and how to read opponent ranges.

Short Stacking Strategy Guide: Lesson 1

Lesson 1a: The limp re-steal

This is much more valuable at fullring but occassionally comes up at 6 max.

Alot of this comes from the Slotboom method for shortstacking PLO that he mentioned in his book, Secrets of Professional Pot Limit Holdem. Also of note is a recent observation that many shortstackers at fullring seem to be limping mid pairs and Ace-big hands upfront to push over a late position raise.

Often, you’ll be upfront in a game and there will be an aggressive limper or blind stealer left to act after you, especially at higher limits. Here, you can take a chance of limping and hoping to have the opportunity to shove over that late aggressor’s likely light raise.

One, even with a shortstack, it’s not fun to play pots out of position.

Two, a raise from you upfront will make it less likely for a late aggressor to re-raise as he should know you are pot-committed with an awful large range of your initial raising range.

Three, the math is very similar and you should already have some good training.

Four, in full-ring games you often gain the benefit of additional dead money with limpers in-between you and the light raiser and/or a weak blind call of the late position raiser.