Innovative Short Stack Strategy

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Traditional logic regarding how to play short-stacked poker is changing all the time. Players in today’s MTTs are constantly looking for new ways to increase their edge at short stack sizes, and as new ideas permeate into the approach of the average tournament regular, counter-adaptations to those new strategies also start to rear their heads. Online MTTs in particular have become much more complex than the simple “under twenty big blinds is the push-fold stage” logic that used to be prevalent among regulars. There are plenty of things you can do at short stack sizes to increase your edge.

Defending the big blind

Defending the big blind more often is probably the biggest change that’s occurred in traditional MTT logic over the past year or so. It’s now entirely ‘standard’ for most players to defend the big blind with a very wide range of hands facing a minraise, especially a minraise from the button. However, while a lot of players are happy to do this at deeper stacks, they rarely consider that it might be an option on stacks as low as six or seven big blinds.

The reason for this is that the shorter that stacks become, our options obviously decrease. At stacks of maybe ten big blinds or more, we can expect to have at least a little bit (and perhaps a lot) of fold equity versus the open-raising ranges of many players. We might shove a hand like Q-T suited over an open-raise with the expectation of both some fold equity and a good amount of all-in equity, adding up to a profitable spot to reshove. But what happens when we’re shorter stacked, and we don’t have enough chips for the raiser to fold?

In this instance, the reshove becomes a lot less profitable, because while we still have our all-in equity, it’s often the expectation of fold equity that makes a reshove a good play. Does that mean we should fold? Well, if we’re getting 4 to 1 or better, which we often will be against a minraise with antes in play, we only need around 20% equity in the pot postflop to make it profitable, so maybe we shouldn’t fold. The average non-pair hand will flop a pair or better roughly 30% of the time, so with a hand that flops as many strong pairs and strong draws, calling with Q-T suited is likely to be more profitable than folding, since folding is neutral EV.

As for how we play the hand postflop when we do flat, well, it gets pretty straightforward. If we flop a strong pair or strong draw, we either donkbet-shove (if we think the villain is likely to call us with a weak pair or Ace high), or we check-shove (if we think the villain is likely to fire a c-bet). If we miss the flop completely, it’s an easy check-fold. The added bonus here is that many villains are less likely to c-bet as a bluff when you defend on a short stack, so on the occasions where you do miss the flop, you’re often going to get to see a turn card for free. Note that it’s better to defend a hand that makes good pairs, like a J-9 offsuit, than a hand that makes flushes and straights, like a 5-4 suited, since we get in fewer tricky bottom-pair spots that way.

Raise-folding in unconventional spots

It wasn’t so long ago that it was seen to be the case that you couldn’t raise-fold any hand with less than twenty big blinds. This logic has, of course, since been proven to be completely wrong. Mathematically speaking, the threshold at which literally any hand is +EV to call against the tightest of ranges is actually closer to around seven or eight big blinds. With wider shoving ranges raise-folding becomes more difficult since the raise itself gets through less often and we’re priced into calling the shove with a wider range, but versus tight players, we can technically raise-fold down to very short stacks.

The most useful spots to raise-fold on short stacks are the ones where we believe that it is more profitable than our other, more conventional option, which is to shove preflop. In spots where our hand is strong enough that we’re going to be priced in to call when someone puts us all-in for the remainder of our stack, it’s fairly likely that an all-in shove is going to be more profitable. We don’t want to raise 9-8 suited and induce a villain to shove with, say, a 20% range of hands against which we have enough equity to call, when we could have shoved all-in and had him only call with the top 15%.

The advantage of having a range for raise-folding from, say, 12bb down to 10bb, is that many mass-tabling, robotic-thinking regulars are going to immediately assume that any non-all-in raise from such a short stack is bound to be a strong hand trying to induce action, and actually fold more often than they would to a shove. Furthermore, if they’re a little less robotic and they’re not responding in this way, then it gives us the chance to balance by raise-calling the strongest hands in our range, and get more value when we do have a monster.

Open-limping

This one is a tricky one to implement effectively. Some tournament players have begun to develop a strategy for limping in in late position with hands that have good flop playability, in spots where they expect that an open-raise will get shoved on frequently. This tends to happen at stack sizes between 15 and 25 big blinds, since those are the most common reshove stack sizes. The advantage of the play is that it throws the raise-reshove dynamic completely out of the window, and since so many MTT regulars have become so accustomed to this dynamic over the years, it renders the hours they’ve spent practising these spots almost useless, and forces them to think in a different paradigm.

When you limp in preflop, there’s one less big blind in the pot than if you had raised. What this means is that all the calculations your opponents might have done with regard to how wide their reshoving ranges should be are now incorrect. Some players will respond by shoving wider ranges, and some will be suspicious and shove tighter. Either way, you’re putting good players out of their comfort zone, and that’s something we should always be looking to do.

The additional benefit here is that when it comes to considering the correct play on the part of the blinds, we now present them with a new option which should narrow their shoving ranges. In the case of the small blind, who previously wouldn’t have considered flatting a raise with 15 big blinds behind, they’re now in a position with a lot of their reshove hands where simply completing the small blind may seem a better option. Similarly, the big blind now has the opportunity to check and see a flop for free, so he needs to have a really good reason to put more chips in the pot.

The end result here is that we get to play a pot in position with a hand that flops well, against two very wide ranges. Contrast this with the simple raise-reshove game most people are used to, and it becomes not only a situation in which most regulars are not accustomed to playing, but also a much more complex spot in which we’re more able to eke out an edge without exposing ourselves to variance. We can also balance our limping range by occasionally making the play with monster hands, which will always be well-concealed in these instances.

A final thought

The essence of short-stacked play is a solid understanding of push-fold poker. For many people this is still something they’re working on. But for others, if you have a good understanding of what’s profitable and what’s not, there are times when using alternative strategies can help you turn marginally profitable spots into very profitable ones, and lower the variance in your game in the process. Try new things, test out your options in each spot, and you might learn a lot.