Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1 (59 page)

Limping is a fine play if you know your opponents are hyper-aggressive. If they are just a bit loose and aggressive, you are much better off raising and taking down the blinds before the flop.

Section 4

Playing Short Stacked (less than 40BB)

  Chapter 12

When You Have Between 40 and 27BBs

Surely you have heard that you should avoid playing trouble hands, such as A-10 and K-J. Well, there is actually a stack I refer to as the trouble stack. If I had to pick a stack that is the toughest to play, it would be between 27 and 40 big blinds, a size for which most of the deep-stacked plays discussed in this book become much less useful. Also, with this stack, you have too many chips to use many of the powerful short-stack strategies that we will discuss later. I try to avoid having a stack of this size. I will show you how I navigate with this trouble stack when I can’t avoid it.

Gamble to Get a Better Stack

When you have between 40 and 27 big blinds, your primary focus should be on getting a larger stack with which you can play your standard, deep-stacked game. To accomplish this, you should be slightly more willing to gamble with parts of your stack.

In general, playing when you have less than 25 big blinds is fairly simple. I use any chips in my stack over 25BBs but less than 40BBs to gamble. In fact, I would say the value of a 25BB stack isn’t much different than that of a 35BB stack. However, the value of a 35BB stack is vastly different to that of a 50BB stack.

Note that if all your opponents have around 40BB stacks, you should be less prone to gamble to get away from your 40BB stack because the effective stack will still be 40BBs. If everyone else has around 50BBs, you should be much more willing to gamble to get out of this stack range.

Suppose I have a 28BB stack. In general, I will look for one spot to raise to 2.25BBs from late position with a weak hand in an attempt to steal the blinds. If I lose, I have 25BBs and can play the standard strategy for that stack size. If I win, I can continue to gamble to build my stack. If I have 35BBs, I have 10BBs to gamble with. I will usually spend these either raising from late position or, when the situation permits, re-raising an aggressive player before the flop. If someone raises to 2.5BBs from middle position, I will be very likely to re-raise to 6.5BBs with a wide range. I will fold all my weak hands to a re-raise. I will obviously play all my strong hands the same way. Notice that your raises and re-raises should get smaller along with your stack.

When using this strategy, be careful not to make a hand like middle pair and lose all your chips. Your primary goal when raising and re-raising with these weak hands is to steal the pot before the flop. Suppose someone raises to 2.5BBs and you re-raise to 6.5BBs from the button out of your 37BB stack with 9
-8
. The raiser calls and you see an A
-K
-3
flop. If your opponent checks, then make a continuation bet of around 8BBs every time. This puts you below 25BBs, but it’s fine to make a standard continuation bet as long as you don’t go too far below that. Of course, you’ll fold to a raise, and give up basically every time if called.

If you raise from late position with a 30BB stack and someone in the blinds calls, you should usually make a standard continuation bet. Fold if you have nothing and your opponent plays back at you, and be willing to get all-in with something like top pair and a good kicker.

It is important to make these steals against players who will fold. If a tight player that hasn’t entered a pot in four orbits raises from first position, you should never re-raise. On the other hand, you could consider calling with a hand like a suited connector and hope for a favorable flop. Suppose you have 32BBs and a tight player raises from first position. If you are in late position with suited connectors, then strongly consider calling. Pay constant attention to everyone’s image and adjust accordingly.

Which Hands to Raise

Once your stack gets down to 40 big blinds, you must start tightening up when raising with weak hands from early and middle position because you lose too much of your stack when your pre-flop steals fail. You must also drastically adjust your late-position range, depending on the type of opponents left to act behind you. If the players are weak and tight, you should raise basically every time you are folded to in late position, but if they are aggressive and constantly re-raising, then play only hands you would at least consider getting all-in with. Playing optimally with 27 to 40BBs requires a great read on the players and the knowledge to play a technically sound game of poker.

You know that your implied odds decrease along with your stack size. You can no longer raise hands like small pairs and suited connectors from early position once you get down to around 40BBs. You raise suited connectors from early position primarily to balance your range. The need for this pre-flop deception goes out the window once you’re short-stacked, because at this point, poker is played mostly before and on the flop. This means you should play hands that have the chance to make top pair.

If you are in middle or late position and the table is playing fairly tight, be willing to open with a wide range of hands, hoping to steal the blinds. If you steal two sets of blinds every orbit and get away with re-raising a player once in a while, you will find your stack growing quickly. If the players behind you are all aggressive, then wait for hands that you are willing to re-raise all-in. So, if you are at a tight table, you could certainly raise 9
-8
from middle position to 2.25BBs, but this would be a clear fold at an aggressive table. If you raised A
-Q
to 2.25BBs at an aggressive table and someone re-raised, you would be more than happy to go all-in if the re-raiser was aggressive.