Before we start with the tips, we will make it very clear what a short stack is, using examples of the basic poker game modes that we will find out there.
Tournament/SNG: tournament at the 4th level with blinds 200/400
A player with 2,000 chips is a short stack, as he only has 5 big blinds. We will generally consider a player to be short when he has anywhere from 1 to 15 big blinds.
Cash game: Game with blinds $0.05/$0.10 with a standard buy-in of $10
Any player who is significantly below the average chip stack of the other players is a short stack. For example, a player with a $4 stack at this table while everyone else has $10 is a short stack.
The following guide will help you deal with this type of player, giving you a good advantage when playing against short stacks.
Min-raise or 2.5xBB on the button when there is a short stack in the blinds.
This is really crucial. If you only learn one lesson from this entire article, make it this one! Using this tip will make a huge leap in the quality of your game. When you min-raise, that is, make the minimum raise allowed (2xBB), you reduce the odds for short stack players, making their all-in less profitable. In other words, they have to spend (risk) more to win less. Do this and they will automatically have to reduce their shoving range, since they won't win many chips considering you only raised 2~2.5BB preflop.
Min-raise from the small blind when everyone folds to you and there is a short stack player in the big blind
Do this often and you will find another profitable situation. Short stack players will usually play a very simple push/fold, that is, they will either push all their chips all-in or they will simply fold their hands. Take advantage of this, if the player has 16/16 or 21/20 status (VPIP/PFR ratio) it means that he will rarely just call your raise. He will only have two actions, fold or all-in. Take advantage of this to steal his blinds.
Trap short-stacks when you have a big hand
To explain this tip, let's imagine a scenario. The player in the cut-off position raises to 3xBB, you flat call (a flat call is a call with a hand that you would normally raise) on the button with KK, and an aggressive player in the big blind goes all-in. This type of situation is truly amazing. You managed to make the short stack push all-in with a wider range of hands than normal, and your hand is very well disguised, even making the first player who raised flat call or try to go all-in on top to try to isolate the short stack. Either way, you will win a big pot. Simply a genius play.
Go all-in against steals with a wider range of hands
This is where you should get to know your short stack opponents. If you have a good sample of their hands, look at their “Steal” status and also their “Fold steal to 3-BET” status. It’s very common to see short stacks who try to steal with 40% of their hands, but fold 80% of the time to a 3-BET. When you encounter opponents like this, try to re-steal (steal the thief, or steal whoever is trying to steal from you) with a wider range of hands.
When doing this, keep in mind that it will be best to counterattack with hands that play well against your opponent's calling range. Cards like suited connectors, for example, are a good bet. But honestly, don't worry too much about the cards, since most of the time your opponents will be folding and you will already have a good profit without needing your cards.
Don't make very light calls (with weak hands)
Often our opponents are stealing with weak hands, but it is good to watch for when that opponent wakes up with a 3-BET when you attempt a steal from early position at the table. It is almost certain that they will have a big hand in this situation, and calling with average hands is not profitable. A good tip is to go back to the status analysis and observe how often our opponents attempt a re-steal against our different positions (early, middle and late), and based on this data, take action.
3-BET with hands that you would usually flat call preflop
To explain this tip, let's illustrate a hand. A regular player opens with a raise from the cut-off and we have 67s. We could usually flat call with this hand, considering that the blinds have a good stack. However, if the blinds are short stacked, they have a good chance of going all-in to try to steal the large amount of chips already in the pot. To avoid this type of uncomfortable situation, we can add some hands to our 3-BET range. This way, we can play in position with good equity, instead of being forced to fold our hand. Another good option is to flat call with middle pairs and call the blinds' shove, since we will have great equity against them, something we won't have with suited connectors as explained above.
Use your opponents stack against them
Short stack players usually have a simple strategy: fold and leave the table. In the meantime, they play with “broken” stacks like 30~39 big blinds. With these stacks, we can think of some interesting ways to take advantage. First, min-raising short stack blinds will leave them without action. For them, going all-in is a very big bet and will probably scare us away from the pot. Therefore, they end up playing fewer hands, and thus we can steal more blinds. Another strategy to combat them is to call pre-flop and play post-flop. These players do not know what to do post-flop and are completely lost. They make a lot of unnecessary bets, do not know how to react to their actions, and play the turn and river poorly. Take advantage of this, if you have even a moderate knowledge of the game it will be enough to simply destroy these players who only know how to do two things: fold and go all-in.
Article translated and adapted from the original: Poker against short stackers
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