How to Not Play Shortstacked

02.22.10 |

Usually these articles are geared toward teaching you how to do something, but I’ve decided to Terantino it here, and instead of giving advice on what TO DO, give advice on what NOT to do.

That said, let’s look at playing with as the short stack at a table. This is the one crucial element that we see happen time after time and it costs the player a lot of equity.

When you’re down to just 10 big blinds, chances are if you’re entering a pot, you’re entering it with hole cards that you plan on going all the way with. The point I’m trying to get across is that you’re not looking to throw in one of your big blinds, and then fold out. It’s just bad money management at the poker table.

Let’s say you have 100 in chips. The blinds are 5/10 and you make a small raise under the gun, about 20 in chips. The table folds around to you and you end up getting shoved on by a much bigger stack. He puts in his 1000 chips, and you have to decide what to do. Do you call or fold?

At this point, with such a short stack, it would be inequitable to fold here. You should be playing all or nothing poker at this point. In our example, our initial raiser folded to the all-in bet, and ended up losing two valuable big blinds. That’s a sure way to blind out and a great way not to play the short stack. Keep this in mind when you play poker online.