Beware the Short Stacks

You can often tell how much experience an online poker player has by the amount of respect he shows towards short-stacked opponents (those who have a well below average stack of poker chips left). Too many new players assume that the short-stacked opponents are the least dangerous ones at the table, because if those opponents were any good then they wouldn’t be short-stacked in the first place.

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But as any experienced player would be happy to admit, being short-stacked is no automatic indication of skill or otherwise, and whether the short-stacked opponents are any good or not is beside the point – the important thing is to recognise that they are potentially dangerous.

To understand why this is the case you simply have to think about the game from the perspective of the short-stacked player. He is perfectly aware that he has far fewer chips than most other players at the table, and his number one concern will be to increase his stack as soon as possible so that doesn’t risk being blinded out. This means he will be much more willing to deviate from textbook play by calling bets that he would otherwise fold to or by playing his own cards much more aggressively.

This being the case, it makes a lot of sense to be wary of the short-stacked players. Don’t be scared of them, of course, but bear in mind their own situation and don’t do anything which will help their cause. Here are some tips that you might like to commit to memory…

1 - Don’t bet big just to try and scare a short-stack out of the pot. He may well call or go all-in himself even if he only has a half-decent hand, and sometimes he will get lucky. Only bet big if you’re really sure that you have a good chance of winning in a showdown.

2 - Tighten your own game. Because the short-stack will often bet over-aggressively to try and increase his share of the chips, it doesn’t make sense for you to play average hands and pay over the odds just to see how things go. Stick to premium hands until the short-stack has recovered at the expense of someone else or has been knocked out.

3 - Trap and kill. If you do get a very strong hand, you can play it modestly in the hope that the short-stack will sense your ‘weakness’ and get aggressive with you. When that happens you can then try to get him to commit all of his chips to the pot and eliminate him from the game with your premium hand.

Short-stacked players aren’t always intelligent enough to be as dangerous as we have indicated in this article, but enough of them are. Protect yourself by giving short stacks the respect that they are due and hopefully you won’t have to discover the hard way just how dangerous they can be.

William Briggs