Copyright 2007 Full
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July 13, 2007
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Poker Lessons)
Poker Lesson: Playing a Short
Stack in Multi-Table Tournaments
Author: Erica Schoenberg
The key to succeeding in tournament play is being
able to handle the ups and downs, because it's not always going
to go perfectly. Your chip stack is not always going to shoot
upwards, which means you'll often need to make good decisions
when you don't have a lot of chips.
Many players get frustrated when they have a short
stack. They look down and see Ace-rag, King-Queen, King-Jack or
some similar hand and they just focus on their own cards instead
of seeing the whole picture. That kind of short-sightedness can
quickly make a short stack even smaller and put the player on
the rail.
Successfully playing a short stack takes a lot of
determination. I believe it's like a mental war when you have
the short stack because it isn't fun when you look around and
everyone has all those chips. They're getting to play fun hands
like 9-10 suited and Jack-10 suited and you don't have enough
chips to play those hands, so you're just sitting there watching
while everyone else is playing poker.
I was playing in a $1,500 No-Limit tournament at
the World Series of Poker* when I raised under the gun with pocket
Kings. It was Day Two of the tournament and it was the first hand
I'd played after about 90 minutes of folding. Another player went
all-in behind me and it was one of those situations where she
didn't take her time to properly evaluate what had transpired
so far. After not playing a single hand, I had raised with 40%
of my stack in the earliest pre-flop position, which usually signals
a monster. She pushed anyway with KJ and I think if she'd taken
her time, she might have made a different decision.
You need to have patience when you're short stacked.
You can't let poor results from previous hands affect you. Instead,
I think it's really good to tighten up after losing a pot so that
you can regroup. To recover from being short stacked, you really
have to take your time and evaluate every situation. Who cares
if you're taking longer than anyone else at the table?
Before the words â??all-inâ? escape
your mouth, take a couple of deep breaths, take 20 seconds and
take a look at where the raise is coming from, how much it is
for, and how much the person has behind. So many times I see people
coming over the top of other players and not realizing their opponent
is already committed and that their chips are going in the pot.
Before you push all of your chips into the middle on a call with
a short stack, look at the person you're playing, re-evaluate
your hand, the raise, and what position it's coming from at the
table. You have to remember that as long as you have chips you
have a chance to climb from the bottom of the ladder to the chip
lead.
That brings up another key point: I don't care what
anyone else has in the tournament because when I start worrying
about how many chips other people have, I'm not focused on the
task at hand, which is increasing my chip stack. Short stacked
or not, I own my chips until I push them into the middle; it's
up to my best judgment to determine the best time to commit them
to a pot.
Being on the short stack demands that you make the
right decision every time you play a pot because making the wrong
one will bust you. Don't be in such a hurry to shove those chips
in. Find the right spot. Don't get frustrated by a string of poor
starting hands. At some point, you might have to take a gamble
and push if you can open the pot, but until that time, you control
your own destiny. Effectively reading the table and the situation
before you act will help you survive and, quite possibly, even
win.
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