Short stacked poker and when to use it to your advantage

Short stacked poker and when to use it to your advantage is when your table is playing tight or you have a tight image at the table. If you have a tight image at the table a lot of the time you will get respect from other players. If stacks aren’t big compared to the blinds, such as, in a turbo style tournament you should either be folding or going all-in pre-flop. If you are applying the most pressure you can with a short stack in a turbo tournament by moving all-in you can either get lucky and make a run at winning or bust out. To play to your advantage with a short stack you should be moving in if the table folds around, and it is just yourself and the big blind left in the pot. You should move in with virtually every hand you can because with the antes and blinds already in the pot you can give yourself another lap around the table to pick a real hand up. If you do collect that fold then you are playing an effective short stack. If you get called which will most of the time only be with an ace high, two face cards, or a pair you still will have an opportunity to outdraw your opponent double through.

When you have a shorter stack in tournaments you need to be able to pick the right spots to move in. if you are sitting with a shorter stack most of the time you want to stay away from moving your poker bonus money in before the flop without a hand like AQ or 88 or better. As you start moving in to later position with a short stack you can begin to open your range of hands up to make moves at pots and potentially win more hands without a showdown. If you have a stack that is only five big blinds or so, and you pick up AA under the gun, to make the pot bigger you can just limp in to the hand to try and induce more limpers. If you do get unlucky by doing that and end up losing to an 89 or Q10 it happens, but you want the most amount of money in the pot before the flop when you get aces on the short stack. You can follow through on every flop with the all-in move following the limps. Some may question the play, but you do want to get the most money in before the flop, and if someone decides to raise you have an easy call to make. Sometimes if you simply just make an all-in raise with AA under the gun you will get a fold from a hand like KQ or AJ that would have played the hand for a limp or raise. So, if you want to pick more money up you don’t want players to lay their hands down. It is a risky play with the short stack, but one you should take. If you can double up or even better triple or quadruple up it is worth the limp in to the pot.