How To Survive When You Are Short Stacked
This article mainly deals with tournament poker. If you become short stacked in a cash game, either cash out or buy back in, you’re giving up too much equity playing short.
First of all, I’m going to explain the concept of “M”. “M” is a term coined by poker pro Paul Magriel. Players understood the concept of M for quite awhile, but there was never a formal name for it before Mr. Magriel started calling it that, and the name just sort of stuck.
M is simply the ability to calculate how many rounds at the table you have left until the blinds devour your chip stack.
For example, if the blinds are $500/$1000, with a $125 anti, there are 10 players at the table, and you have a stack of $40,000 in chips. So, 10 players are putting in $125. That’s $1,250 in antis each round, plus $1500 in blinds, for a total pot size of $2,750 each hand.
To calculate your M, you simply divide your chip stack by the pot size. In this example, we’d have an M of roughly 14.5.
When you have an M of 20 or higher, you’re in relatively good shape, and aren’t in immediate danger of being blinded off.
When your M drops down to 10-20, you’ll need to start getting more aggressive, picking spots to steal blinds and pushing your strong hands.
When your M reaches below 10, you’re in immediate danger of becoming blinded away. You can consider yourself short stacked at this point. When your stack drops down to 8-10x the big blind, you need to start making moves, and fast.
In tournament poker, one of the most common mistakes I see is players who try to wait around for a hand when they’re short stacked, and being blinded away. You need to start making moves while you still have enough chips to scare players away, or if you do get called, have a shot at getting a decent double up.
You need to be selective about when you get aggressive, but at the same time you don’t have time to wait around for the cards at this point, it’s much more important to look for opportunities to steal the blinds.
There is a critical concept in poker that is amplified in this situation, it’s called first hand vigorish. This simply means that you are the first to enter the pot. You can push all in with much weaker hands than your opponents will be able to call you with, so you give yourself two ways to win the pot, uncontested or by winning if you do get called.
Medium size stacks are the least likely to call your all ins. Short stacks are desperate, so they loosen up their calling range. Big stacks are trying to bust people. The middle stacks are trying to maintain their stack sizes, and wait for premium hands to play with. So attack the medium stacks when at all possible.
Look for spots in middle to late position where the pots are uncontested so far in order to be the first in the pot, push your stack in, and hope to take it down. If you’re lucky enough to pick up a monster, do the same and hope for a caller.
Small pairs and small connecting cards have little value here. High cards have huge value. Get aggressive, push, and try to stay above 10x the big blind at all costs. You stand a much better chance of winning a tournament by pushing in the right spots than you do waiting around to pick up a premium hand.