7 Tips For Playing Against Short Stackers - Poker Short Stackers

Since Pokerstars has recently changed there policy and seperated short stack games to 40-100BB games I havent had to play much against short stackers. This is a good thing and I commend Pokerstars on making these changes. However, many people still play with short stackers on a regular basis, either through choice on Pokerstars or on another poker site without choice. The following guide is meant to show various ways in which you can minimize a short stacks edge against you and even become profitable against them!

1 – Minraise or 2.5x the button when a shortstacker is in the blinds.

This is absolutely cruicial. If you dont take anything other then this from this article make sure you implement this if have not already. When you minraise the button you cut down on the shortstackers immediate odds to shove allin. IE they have to shove more to win less. Do this and they cant shove as wide of a range profitably compared to if you 2x or 2.5x raise preflop.

2 – Minraise the small blind when its folded to you and theres a shortstacker in the big blind.

Do this very frequently. Most of the these shorts tackers work on a push/fold basis, so even though they should basically never fold to a minraise when they are in position, they do. If the short stacker has stats like 16/16 , 21/20 etc it means they are almost always raising whenever they put money in the pot, so they will almost never flat your minraise. Exploit this.

3 – Trap short stackers with a big hand

Ok, so here is a scenario. CO raises to 3x, you flat on the button with KK and an aggro shortstacker in the blinds shoves allin. This spot is awesome. Not only have you got the shortstacker to shove in light, your hand is super under repped so the original raiser may flat or even raise to isolate the shortstacker. Either way, you win a big pot. Genius.

4 – Shove over steals very wide.

Here is where you need to know your shorts tacker. If you have a big sample on them, look at there Attempt to steal, also look at there fold steal to 3b %. It is pretty common to see shorts tackers who steal with over 40% frequency and fold to a 3bet 80% of the time. When you encounter short stackers like this you need to be re-raising there steals with a wide range of hands. Try to do it with hands that play decent against there calling range, IE suited and connected cards. But to be perfectly honest, a lot of the time you can 3bet them super light and your hand is almost irrellivent,you will be making so much money on the steal itself.

5 – Do not call them super light.

If they shove over your EP raise they almost always have a very big hand. They are not shoving light in this spot. Its kinda impossible to say exactly what you should call there shoves with but alot of regs are making a mistake by calling far too light. The best advice I can give is try to get a large sample on the shortstacker and figuring out his reshoving range vs your open in different positions and then figure out your calling range based on hands that have good equity against what hes shoving whilst compensating for the dead money in the pot.

6 – 3-bet hands you might ususally flat preflop.

What I mean by this is, if a reg raises from the CO and you havee 67s. This hand is naturally a flat if the blinds are both full stackers. However, when the blinds are short stackers they are likely to be shoving wide over your flat, due to all the dead money already in the pot. In this spot I prefer to add a hands like suited connectors into my 3-betting range. I may still flat medium pairs and then call it off when the shortstacker shoves, the medium pairs will have alot more equity against the short stackers range compared to small suited connectors.

7 – Use there stack size against them

Most short stackers play until they have doubled there stack and leave. Sometimes they end up playing a 30-39bb stack. This leads to some interesting situations. Firstly, if you minraise the button and a shorts tacker is in the blinds, for them to shove it becomes pretty huge overbet, which they are not happy to do with a wide range. Exploit this and start raising with a higher frequency when they are this stack size, you will get more folds. Also, when they have a 30-40bb stack size you can actually flat some of there raises and play postflop poker These guys are generally pretty bad, they will c-bet too much and be incapable of playing turns and rivers as good as you. If you are a competant full stacker you will have no problem eating these players alive.