Champion of Poker

The recession has reduced the amount of money people have available for most entertainment pursuits. You may have also experienced similar restrictions on how much money you can put aside for your poker bankroll. There are strategies that you can employ to become a good short stack poker player, thus maximising the effect that a smaller amount of money can have on your online poker game profits and allowing you to maintain your play at stakes you could not play with normal bankroll management. Once you have accumulated more winnings then you can either revert to your original poker strategy or carry on short stacking your way to the top.

Short stack strategy suits both the experienced player and the new player. The new player benefits from the fact that decision making is likely only to last for two streets of action, usually at that point you are either all-in or forced to fold. Experienced players may have found that players are either frightened or unwilling to play them because of their excellent play and in order to change it up they buy in for smaller amounts. This can disguise your ability as many unknown players look at small buy ins and presume that this is just a weak player buying in with whatever they have not bothering about deep stack play or bankroll management. It is rare that players look at a short stack and say that this is short stack specialist, unless you are well-known for it. The assumption with short stackers is “assume they are bad until they show you they are good”. Whilst you are showing them, this is where money can be made.

Poker Players often go on tilt seeing a short stack. Short stack strategies are heavily criticised on the forums and in the online poker room chat. These false perceptions by other players on playing short stack poker give you an advantage right away. Players will either give you more action to try and bust you or give you action because they believe you to be weak.

Reading other players hands becomes easier the shorter you play too. It is not worth playing suited connectors or low pocket pairs against a short stack player as the implied pot odds you are receiving are not enough. It is not worth your while risking the bets to hit the improved set or draw when your potential win is only a small amount. If players are showing you drawing hands or connectors at the showdown then they are making fundamental errors against you. Players should only be playing AK, AQ and high pocket pairs against you. Anything else is too loose and these are players you can beat with this strategy.

There is increasing clamour by anti-short stackers to have the online poker rooms increase the minimum buy-in to forty big blinds from the current normal amount of twenty buy-ins. They believe this would eliminate short stacking players from the game. This will probably not occur as the online poker rooms are aware that it is unlikely every room will suddenly implement this change. This means if one flagship site changes their buy-in rules then the short stack players will simply move elsewhere. As online poker rooms are not in the habit of costing themselves money you can expect that, for now at least, you will be able to continue buying in short.

Short stack poker is not an easy strategy to profit from. Some of the best short stack players make their money from others trying unsuccessfully to play short stack poker. It is also a difficult game to play for long periods as there is not much thought involved. What would be an interesting hand to consider in deep stack play is usually an all-in bet during short stack play. I have decided that only a money motivated player would be interested in playing short stack for long periods of time. If you are a poker theorist who thrives on unravelling the complexities of a hand then this may be a poker strategy you should avoid.

By Malcolm Clarke