Concept of the Month: DalTXColtsFan's 2024 short-stacking primer

Why an updated primer about the short stack strategy?

The short stack strategy is criminally underrated and underpromoted as a way for prospective live low-stakes no-limit-hold’em cash players to get their feet wet and build up a bankroll for eventual full- and deep-stack play with more manageable risk while learning the game.

I don’t understand why there’s so much resistance to it. I can only guess it’s because so few books are written about it. Most books only teach how to play a full or deep stack with maybe a few pages dedicated to short stacking. Maybe people see the “good” players always buy in full or deep and try emulate them, not understanding that it takes years of experience and extremely deep pockets to be able to make turn and river decisions for hundreds of dollars. Maybe people simply “feel like wimps” when they buy in for tiny stacks when everyone else at the table has deep stacks. I don’t know.

But the short stack strategy WORKS. And it’s not just me saying this – David Sklansky and Ed Miller among others agree with me, even in 2024.

What is the short stack strategy?

In short, the short stack strategy is simply that you buy in to a no-limit cash game for the minimum, ideally when the minimum is 40bb or less. The idea is that you negate the advantage that more experienced and better-rolled players have over you on the big-money streets (the turn and river) by sticking to premium hands that have an equity advantage and getting your small stack in the middle between preflop and the flop.

When does the short stack strategy actually work?

The more of the following conditions you find at your table, the more likely the short stack strategy is to be effective:
• There are multiple villains at the table who are unlikely to fold to a raise after limping into a pot
• Early-position open raises are consistently getting called at least twice
• Pot-sized flop bets are consistently getting called by hands that are not ahead of TPTK
• Few if any other players at the table have less than 100bb in front of them

For the record, I very rarely find a 1/2, 1/3 or 2/5 table where these conditions are not present, and on weekends, casinos are usually FULL of tables like this.

A rare condition is to find a table where there is at least one villain raising 20% or more of his hands. As we will discuss later, the shortstack strategy works even better when this condition is present along with at least 2 of the others.

What starting hands should you play?

We will discuss what to do if there is a raise ahead of you and/or a 3-bet behind you later. For now, assume that if nobody has raised yet (regardless of how many have limped) these are the hands you will play:
• From UTG, UTG+1 and UTG+2, play only AA-JJ and AK
• From MP and HJ, add TT and AQ
• From the CO and BTN, add 99, 88, AJ, AT and KQ
• From the blinds, as a beginning shortstack player, play only AA-TT and AQ+. The reason for this is simply position. From the blinds you’re going to be playing the hand out of position, often to multiple villains. What a disadvantage that is cannot be overstated. Once you get more comfortable playing out of position, loosen up to what you would play from the CO and BTN.

A good standard raise size is 5bb plus 1bb per limper. As you get more comfortable playing the short stack strategy you can raise more when you’re confident the villains will CALL more. As we’ll discuss later, your goal is to make the pot big enough on the flop that you can put the rest of your stack in without having to make an unreasonable overbet. And it’s much better to make the pot too big than to make it too small.

I would also note that other shortstackers play wider ranges than these from every position, for example they will raise AQ or TT from UTG (I’ve seen one poster say he even raises 77 from early position). My personal advice is to stick to the best of the best while out of position until you have a lot of experience, because TT and AQ can put you into difficult spots postflop, and when you’re out of position, the difficulty is magnified. Early on in your shortstacking career you’re going to have enough challenges with just the preemies, i.e. when you raise JJ and get a Q-high board or when you raise AK and completely whiff the flop. Get comfortable in those spots first, then loosen up.

Won’t the villains catch on that we’re only playing premium hands?

I have yet to find a table where anybody adjusted their play to mine. I’ve folded for 90 minutes, raised to 5bb UTG, had someone say, “WHOAH! That’s a BIG raise! He means business!”, someone else says, “He must have something serious” and then I get 4 callers.

I have a friend who BUILT HIS ENTIRE BANKROLL one small stack at a time. He’d go to a casino in Shreveport, buy in for $80, double it up, cash out, go to another casino, lather, rinse, repeat. He did that every weekend for a year and built up a bankroll of over $10,000 to fuel his full- and deep-stack play. Nobody ever caught on to what he was doing. Nobody ever gave him dirty looks or verbal abuse for hitting and running. As a matter of fact, other villains at the table were trying to teach him how to play.

A side note about effort in poker

In many fields, talent is a prerequisite. Painting, drawing, music, mathematics, athletics – these are examples of fields where someone blessed with natural talent has an almost insurmountable head start over someone with no natural talent. Of course, between two people with similar natural talent, the harder worker is invariably going to be more successful, but one’s natural talent level is a HUGE determining factor in success in the field.

There are SOME natural talents that help one’s poker game. I would argue that the top 2 are emotional stability (keeping your cool in adverse situations so that you’re always making the right decision no matter how many bad beats you’ve taken or how big of jerks the other players at the table are being) and the ability to recall past hands (it can be a huge help when you’re in a situation and you can instantly recall how you’ve handled similar situations in the past).

But frankly, in poker, the difference that natural talent makes is almost negligible. Almost 100% of the time, if person A works harder at their game than person B, person A ends up being a more successful poker player than person B regardless of how much natural poker talent either person has.

So no matter how you decide to play poker - short stack, full stack, deep stack, Omaha, fixed limit hold’em or Go Fish (the last one was a joke) - you need to ask YOURSELF “How bad do you want it”. The harder you work the more money you’re likely to make, it’s as simple as that.

Some of you are thinking to yourselves, “Oh, I’m sure that doesn’t apply to *me* - I’ll just read a few books and head to the casino and be ready to go.” If you’re thinking that, I hope to see you at my table someday. If you’re thinking, “Hmm, he’s probably right, and I *do* want to eventually make money at poker, so I’d better start working harder than the other players,” I applaud you, and hope to see you among the elite few who eventually make more than they lose!

Isn’t it boring to only play 8% or 10% of your hands?

This plays right into the side note above. If all you want to do is sit down, turn your brain off and fold until you get a premium hand, that’s your prerogative. But if you want to put forth the effort to become a better poker player (more specifically, if you want to work harder than the guy sitting next to you), you will pay attention to every single hand that’s being played at the table.

First things first, you will pay attention to your table for the simple reason that you want to make sure you’re at a table where the short stack strategy will work. You’re constantly watching for the conditions listed earlier.

Second, you’re preparing for the future when you start buying in full. With a short stack, if you have, for example, 22 or 76 suited on the button after a raise and 2 callers, you have to fold. You just don’t have the implied odds to chase the monster with those speculative hands. But you can think to yourself, “What would I do if I were full stacked or deep stacked here?” You would call, and then when you see the flop, you would make a decision about what action you would have taken based on the reads on the players you’ve built up and the odds the pot is laying you. When you’re not sure what you would do, you can make a note of it and post a thread on the forum for discussion.

I’m also assuming that in preparation for your full- or deep-stack NL endeavor you’re reading books. My personal favorites are Sklansky’s No-Limit Hold’Em Theory and Practice, Harrington on Cash Games Vol 1 and 2, Ed Miller’s The Course and the new book “Help Them Give You Their Money” by Sklansky and Malmuth. I personally find it entertaining and enlightening to look at a hand in play and compare what advice each different author would give. The authors I’ve mentioned are usually very good about clearly defining the conditions under which their advice is valid (for example they would never advise balancing your range against villains who are clearly paying zero attention to it), so this can be very useful.

Lastly, while you’re watching hands you can practice putting villains on ranges based on their history at the table and their actions, refine their ranges based on their actions on each street, and when a rare hand goes to showdown, see if you were right.

The friend I mentioned earlier who short-stacked for a year did exactly that the whole time he spent building up his bankroll. At the end of a year he had a HUGE mental database to start from when he made the move from short-stacking to full-stacking.

Back to the question, I trust that it is obvious that if you’re paying attention to every hand that’s being played at the table while waiting for your premium hands, boredom will be the least of your worries.

What is a reasonable overbet?

You will hear many poker coaches say, “Overbetting is bad.” Any time any so-called poker “expert” makes such a blanket statement without justification, call it into question. WHY is the coach telling you that overbetting is bad?

The reason is, USUALLY when you overbet the pot, you’re only going to be called by better hands. BUT THERE ARE TABLES WHERE THIS IS NOT TRUE. You have to pay attention. Some players don’t think about pot odds at all. For example, there will be $30 in the pot, someone will overbet shove $40, and a player with a flush draw will think, “It’ll only cost me $40 to see if I make my flush. Let’s dance.” End of story. Another example is someone has K9, the flop is 982 or something similar, and someone overbets $40 into a $30 pot. A lot of small-stakes players are thinking, “He has nothing – he’s just trying to push me around” and call just to have the satisfaction of knowing they couldn’t be bluffed off a hand. Whether or not an overbet will be called by a worse hand depends on many factors include table conditions, villain tendencies, board texture, the number of villains in the hand and the size of the pot.

A ”reasonable overbet” is any overbet that has a decent chance of being called by worse hands.

Why did you suddenly change subjects to overbets?

Because we’re about to talk about flop play with a short stack. To go into a bit more detail, the ideal outcome of the short stack strategy is that you make a big raise before the flop with a premium hand, and hope it gets called in enough places to create a reasonable overbet situation on the flop.

Example 1: You have 40bb. You raise preflop to 8bb after 3 limpers. They all call. There are now 32bb in the pot and you have 32bb behind. On all but the least favorable flops you’re putting the rest of your stack in on the flop. This is about the best situation you can hope for when playing with a short stack.

Example 2: You have 40bb. You raise preflop to 8bb after 2 limpers. They both call. There are now 24bb in the pot and you have 32bb behind. On all but the least favorable flops you’re putting the rest of your stack in on the flop. This is not quite the ideal situation – you prefer to not have to overbet the flop. But you’re not overbetting it by much, and at most tables, there will be a good chance of getting called by worse. (As a corollary, if you’re at a table where an 8bb overbet isn’t consistently getting called by hands that are behind TPTK, rack up and go to a different table.)

Example 3: You have 40bb. You raise preflop to 8bb after 1 limper. The limper calls. There are now 16bb in the pot and you have 32bb behind. Very rarely is this a reasonable overbet. You are most likely going to need to abandon the short stack strategy and play 2 more streets of poker.

How do you play the flop when you flop at least TPTK?

Note: Until we indicate otherwise, assume we’re talking about flop decisions when either we’re first to act or we’ve been checked to on the flop. You will also notice that few discussions take into account the number of villains in the pot. It would be absurd to think that the correct decision against 1 villain is the same correct decision against 4, but to try to keep this primer as simple as possible, proceed on the assumption that IF WE HAVEN’T FACED ANY AGGRESSION, the right decision is the right decision regardless of the number of villains in the pot. We will most likely discuss spots where this is not accurate in future primers.

Under all but the most pessimistic conditions, if you flop at least TPTK and your remaining stack is small enough relative to the pot to make a reasonable overbet, you’re shoving. HOPEFULLY by the time you’ve folded over and over and have finally been dealt a hand you can play, you have enough reads to have a sense that there’s a decent chance your reasonable overbet will be called by worse.

If you can’t make a reasonable overbet, you really have no choice but to abandon the shortstack strategy and play at least 2 more streets of poker.

In all seriousness though, if you literally always put the rest of your stack in the pot for a reasonable overbet any time you flop TPTK or better you will rarely be making a bet an equity disadvantage, and the few times you do, it’s just bad luck, and that’s poker!

What poker homework can I do to prepare for more difficult decisions?

Flopping TPTK or better when you have a short stack is an “easy” position to be in. There are less trivial decisions you will encounter which we will discuss. You have to “learn to play poker” to figure out what the right decision is in these spots.

DiamondDog has an epic series on the forum called “The Mathenoobics of Poker”. Those of you who have decided you want to work harder than everybody else will read this series of articles.
The most important pieces of information from that series relative to the short stack strategy specifically:
1. The pot has A dollars in it. You go all in for B dollars. What percentage of the time do the villains need to all fold for you to break even? (Note – it’s a rare bird that you’ll ever have a significant amount of fold equity at a table where it’s profitable to shortstack, but it’s helpful to know the odds nonetheless).
2. The pot has A dollars in it. You go all in for B dollars. What percentage of the time do you have to have the best hand at the river to break even if 1 villain calls you? If 2 villains call you?
3. You put the villain on a limp-calling range, let’s say for example you think he’ll limp call with any ace, any 2 suited cards, any 2 connected cards at least 65 or 64, pocket pair and 2 broadways. How many combinations of cards is that?
4. Now give yourself a specific starting hand, for example QQ, and a random flop, i.e. K89tt or K93r. How many combinations of cards are in the range of hands he will call you with that you are ahead of?
5. How many combinations of cards are in the range he’ll call you with that you’re behind?
6. How many combinations will he fold?
7. What is your equity against the range he will call you with? (Note – obviously it’s better to use a tool like PokerStove to calculate this. And note that in PokerStove you can look at the effect that the number of villains in the pot has on your overall equity.)

These are not hypothetical questions:
• You have 30bb, you raise AKo to 7bb and get 1 caller, the flop comes J44r. What are the answers?
• What if the flop is J97tt? NOW what are the answers?
• You have 25bb, you raise QQ to 8bb and get 2 callers. The flop comes K93r. What are the answers?
• What if the flop is J93r? NOW what are the answers?
• What if you’re been sitting at the table for 2+ hours and it looks like people aren’t willing to call with pocket pairs? How does that affect your combo counts and equity?

You can literally sit down with a pencil and paper and make up DOZENS of these situations and have all of that information in your head before you ever even go sit at the table at the casino.

If YOU are willing to put in all of this work while others at the table aren’t, you are at a HUGE advantage.

Lastly, I cannot overstate the extent to which playing with a short stack simplifies your decisions. Once you make a decision on the flop, YOU’RE DONE!!!! The other 2 deep stacks in the hand with you don’t have that luxury – they have to worry about each other! They have to account for what cards could come on the turn, what their opponent could do on the turn, what could come on the river, how much of their stack are they trying to put in the pot etc. These can be very difficult decisions when you’re either inexperienced or underrolled (or BOTH!). Playing the short stack strategy, you will typically make 2 decisions per hand, and there will USUALLY be a CLEAR correct decision.

What do you do when there’s an overcard to your pair or overpair on the board?

If you do all of the homework I suggest above, you will find that in many if not most cases, the overcard to your pair does not stop it from being mathematically correct to put the rest of your stack in. You will obviously be behind when called more often than when you have TPTK or better, but it will USUALLY still be the correct play. The bigger you can make the pot on the flop, the less equity you need for your shove to be profitable. Obviously, you need to slow down the more villains are in the pot because of the increased probability that someone has the overcard you fear, especially if it’s an ace. In future primers we’ll look at how to calculate the probability that someone has the overcard you fear.

How do you play the flop when you flop two overcards?

I would argue that this is the worst situation to encounter when playing the short-stack strategy. At most tables where the short-stack strategy is profitable, you’re going to be behind when called more frequently when you flop overcards and shove than in any other situation. But:
• you’ll find that you rarely have less than 20% equity against your opponents’ calling range.
• When you *are* ahead, anyone with unpaired undercards has 6 outs to pull ahead of your ace- or king-high, and you don’t want to give them a free card.
• If you always shove when you have TPTK or an overpair and always check or fold when you don’t, even Hellen Keller will pick up on that and take shots at you.
• When you shove AK and get “caught” by someone with 22, someone might actually be paying attention, and when you later shove with an overpair, it’ll be harder for them to fold their 66 or whatever they have
• If they’ve SEEN you shove an overpair and get called by a pocket pair, you might actually have some rare fold equity.
• On a paired board, ace-high is actually reasonably likely to be the best hand.
• On a WET board, you’re more likely to be called by straight draws and/or flush draws you’re ahead of.
• Draws – even backdoor draws – strengthen overcards.

As a beginner to the shortstack strategy, I would not fault you if you wanted to play cautiously when you flop overcards. At passive tables, you may actually be able to get to showdown for free, and if anyone bets into you, they probably have you beat. But I would encourage you to do as much of the homework described earlier as possible, because you will be surprised how often you can make flop shoves with nothing but overcards that are actually profitable because the pot is so big relative to your remaining stack. Any time you have less than 20% total equity (including fold equity) with overcards it’s just bad luck, and that’s poker.

I would also not fault you if you wanted to shove whenever your remaining stack was, say, no more than 2/3 of the pot and not overbet the flop with overcards until you’re more experienced.

I’ve seen other posters say you can make a smaller flop bet – just enough to overcharge 6-out draws, i.e. about a quarter of the pot – when you flop overcards. I’m not a huge fan of this idea for these reasons:
• even Helen Keller will pick up on it if you always shove a pair and always make a small bet with overcards
• It is hard to play profitably when you put a significant percentage of your stack in the pot and then fold. Against passive opponents who would never raise you without a monster hand, you’d have to be prepared to fold to a raise.
• At tables where the shortstack strategy actually WORKS, you don’t have a great deal of fold equity even when you overbet – you’ll be behind when called even MORE often with a quarter-pot flop bet.
• What do you do if you don’t improve on the turn when they just call your flop bet?

With all of that said, if quarterpotting the flop with overcards is a mistake, it’s not a gigantic mistake, so it’s not the end of the world to give it a try a few times to gain learning experiences.

I will repeat, do the homework mentioned earlier, and when you’re not sure what to do during a session, make a note of the situation and post the hand on the forum for discussion.

What do you do after you double up?

First things first, it is very important to emphasize that there is absolutely no shame in hitting and running. It is not unethical. You have the right to get up from the table whenever you want. Your conscience may eat at you a little bit, but wait until the next time you double up, end up putting it all in the middle and getting sucked out on. Trust me, you’ll never feel bad about getting up again.

With that said, hitting/running and RATHOLING are two different things. Some casinos have strict rules against ratholing. At some casinos, if you double up at a $1/$3 table, ask for a table change, and try to buy in to the new table for the original $100 you could get in big trouble. Some casinos make you take all of your chips with you no matter WHAT table you go to, so you couldn’t even, for example, buy into a $1/$2 game for $100 after doubling up at a $1/$3. So make sure you know the rules!

We will talk about bankroll considerations later. Consistently getting up after you double up allows you to gradually build a bankroll for eventual deep-stacked play. Some people, if they are lucky enough to double up quickly, don’t want to get up because “they just got to the casino” and don’t want to just turn right around and leave. Again, your choice. You could go do something else, you could play a different game (i.e. if you double up at a $1/$2 table you could possibly cash out and then buy in for $100 at a 1/3 table depending on casino rules).

If you do decide to stay at the table after doubling- or tripling-up, it can be a good opportunity to “practice” making decisions for larger amounts of money. Just understand that you will be at a disadvantage to those more experienced than you. Just tell yourself, “I just doubled up. I could get up right now, but I’m going to stay and learn, and if I end up losing everything in front of me, I’ll just chalk it up to a poker lesson and move on.” Make sure you BELIEVE it though – sitting down with $100, tripling it up, getting all-in pre with aces and getting sucked out on is a TOUGH experience the first time it happens to you.

Bankroll considerations

I cannot overstate what a gigantic role bankroll plays in live NL. I’ve seen posters recommend 30 to 50 full-stack buyins. That’s $6,000-$10,000 for $1/$2 and $9,000-$15,000 for $1/$3. Most people look at those numbers and think, “That’s utterly ridiculous. You do NOT need to have $15,000 in a separate bank account just to play a game where you buy in for $300.”

To give you an idea that it might not be as ridiculous as you think, suppose a casino in Vegas suddenly started paying 45 to 1 instead of 35 to 1 on a roulette wheel. Would you take out your life’s savings and bet it on one roll? I hope not. How much WOULD you bet on each roll? $10? $20? $100? Decide that for yourself. And then remember, when you play that specific roulette game you’re making the correct DECISION every time they spin the wheel. In poker you will occasionally make mistakes. How ridiculous does 50 buyins sound now?

I don’t want to belabor this point, but suppose you buy into a $1/$3, bet big preflop, the flop and the turn, the river puts 3 to a suit on the board and the villain donks all in. That could be anywhere from a $300 to a $500 decision. Will you be able to estimate the probability the villain is naked-ace bluffing? Will you be able to pull the trigger and call if you believe he probably is? If your read is that he’s a rock who will only donk all in with the nuts will you have the discipline to kiss the 80bb-120bb that you put in the pot on the first 3 streets goodbye and move on to the next hand without losing a second of sleep? NOW how ridiculous does that $15,000 bankroll sound?

But those discussions are for another article.

To play the shortstack strategy, I’d recommend a bankroll of 30 shortstack buyins. That should be plenty as long as you have consistent access to profitable tables. You will suffer your share of bad beats. Everybody does. You will suffer your share of coolers. Everybody does. You will be on both sides of those – your KK will flop a set against someone’s AA too. You will have AA when a tight player has KK too. But if you’re studying the game, staying patient, paying attention to the table and making the best decisions you can, you are very unlikely to ever go broke with a 30 shortstack-buyin bankroll.

Should you limp along with speculative hands?

When you’re on a short stack, you’re in late position, several villains have limped around and you have a speculative hand like a suited ace, two suited broadways, suited connector or pocket pair, it’s tempting to limp along and see what the flop brings. If you have at least 30bb in your stack, you have plenty of implied odds to see a flop with one of those hands for 1bb.

If you limp along, be prepared to fold to a raise, even a small one. You cannot put 10-20% of your stack in the pot with a speculative hand preflop and expect to be a long-term winner.

The other thing to understand is that in this situation, you’re not playing the short-stack strategy. You could very well find yourself having to make decisions on the flop AND the turn and possibly the river as well. If you’ve studied and practiced deeper-stacked four-street poker, go for it, if not, just be prepared for unfamiliar territory. If you feel uncomfortable in a hand, write it down and post it on the forum later.

Should you try to limp-reraise?

If you’re at a table where late-position raises after multiple limpers are always getting called by all of the limpers but early-position raises are hardly ever getting called, it can be tempting to try a limp-reraise.

Again, be wary of any poker coach who would simply tell you “never limp-reraise”. The coach needs to JUSTIFY that.

A limp-reraise is a risky play. The best-case scenario is the person to your left raises and gets 3 or 4 callers and you go all in. Usually 1 or 2 people behind you will call and you’ll get your whole stack in at an equity advantage. The worst-case scenario is you get several limpers behind you. Now you’re playing a multiway pot out of position and you’ll have to play 2 or 3 streets postflop. Good luck with that.

If you’re at a table where early-position raises are getting multiple callers, I’d go ahead and raise. You’ll usually EASILY be able to put your stack in on the flop. There’s just nothing to gain from “getting fancy” in that case.

If you’re at a table where early-position raises AREN’T consistently getting multiple callers, there’s just not a very high chance you’re going to get to squeeze multiple callers behind you, so there’s not a lot gain in THAT case either.

About the only condition under which trying a limp-reraise makes any sense at all is if early-position raisers are getting multiple callers AND there are at least 2 if not 3 villains who are raising a LOT of their hands. In that case, you’re still taking a RISK when you limp your preemie in early position – it could still get limped around behind you which is a disaster when a raise would have gotten you 2 or 3 callers and an easy flop shove. BUT – at least in this circumstance there’s a decent chance you’ll get to shove over a raiser and a couple callers.

One strategy I’ve seen recommended is if you’re going to try the limp-reraise, try it with the bottom of your opening range, like try it with AK, AQ or TT. I don’t particularly hate that idea as long as you’re willing to get your whole stack in the middle preflop given the opportunity. Even if preflop does get limped around, those are 3 hands that create difficult decisions on the flop, so you more easily abandon ship if you get a flop you don’t like.

What do you do after you win a “small” hand?

You sit with, say, 33bb, raise to 6bb and get 3 callers, shove the flop and everybody folds. You now have about 50bb in front of you.

50-70bb is the worst stack size to have, frankly – you don’t have enough implied odds to call preflop raises with speculative hands, and it will be more difficult to create a reasonable overbet situation on the flop (i.e. in the above example, if you raise to 6bb and get 3 callers, there are 24bb in the pot and you have 44bb behind. If you’re in late position after, for example, 3 limpers, you can TRY a huge raise to something like 10bb – at some tables, this will actually work and everybody will call – now there are about 40bb in the pot and you have about 40bb behind. Even if only 2 of them call it’s 30bb in the pot with 40bb behind.)

Usually, you pretty much just have to play three-street poker – raise hands before the flop that are likely to have an equity advantage, and if the flop is favorable, size your flop and turn bets to get your stack in.

Going into detail about how to play three-street poker is out of scope for this article but I wanted to at least mention it because it is NOT an uncommon situation for a shorstacker to find himself in.

What if you face aggression on the flop?

If you flop TPTK or better, and you’re shortstacked, I would plan on pretty much always putting the rest of your stack in on the flop. If you read DiamondDog’s series and did the combo-counting exercises you will have a pretty good sense for just how sensationally unlucky you have to be to flop TPTK and not have the best hand. The first time you raise AK, get a couple callers, the flop comes K83, a villain donks, you shove and the villain flips over 88 you’re going to feel pretty stupid. The next time you could raise QQ, flop T73, get donked into and watch the villain flip over 33. You’ll wonder why you even played the hand. Don’t. You played both hands perfectly and hit some bad luck. Play long enough and you’ll see villains donk KQ on the K83 or JT on the T73. You will also see someone call your preflop raise of QQ with JJ thinking they’re being so sneaky and then donk the T73 flop thinking they trapped you. You will not be a long term winner if you assume every donk is two pair or better.

I would not fault you, especially in the beginning, for abandoning ship any time you’re donked into and you don’t have at least top pair. Villains at tables where the shortstack strategy actually works tend to be the type that will CALL with just about anything, but will only put money in the pot AGGRESSIVELY with a really good hand. But again, watch your table – have you seen any donks? Did they go to showdown? What were they? This just isn’t a situation anyone can teach you. You have to learn from study and experience.

What if you’re 3-bet pre or facing a raise?

With QQ-AA and AK, as a shortstacker, your mentality should be to size your raises, 3-bets or 4-bets to get your whole stack in the middle preflop given the chance. If you have one of those 4 hands and anyone has one of the hands that has you crushed, it’s just bad luck, and that’s poker.

With hands like JJ, TT and AQ facing a raise, it’s a tougher decision. If old man coffee raises, as a short stacker it’s not the end of the world to just abandon ship with one of those hands. If it’s a villain who’s raising 20% of his hands, there’s plenty of his raising range you’re ahead of or at least flipping against, so you can go ahead and 3-bet. The “problem”, though, is if he 4-bets you, you have to be prepared to put the rest of your stack in knowing you’re probably going to be behind or flipping at best (as I've said several times, you will not be a long-term winner if you get into the habit of putting a huge chunk of your stack in the pot and then folding). But for most villains, their 4-bet range is such a small percentage of their raising range that with a short stack it’s still profitable in the long run. Often he will just flat your 3-bet and then you have a trivial flop shove.

If you raise TT, JJ or AQ and get 3-bet, again, it’s a tougher decision. Does a 3-bet from that villain mean exactly TT+ and KQ+? If so, frankly, you probably need to abandon ship. Even if he’ll also 3-bet hands like 77+, KT+ or even QJ, your equity against that entire range usually isn’t that great.

I cannot emphasize enough: DECIDE HOW YOU’RE GOING TO RESPOND TO A 3-BET ***BEFORE*** YOU RAISE and DECIDE HOW YOU’RE GOING TO REACT TO A 4-BET ***BEFORE*** YOU 3-BET. Know or at least estimate the tendencies of EACH PLAYER STILL IN THE HAND.

I also can’t overstate the importance of stoving. You have TT and the 3-better’s range is exactly KQ+ and TT+. What is your equity against that range? How much is in the pot? How much equity do you need to have if your shove is called for your shove to be profitable? What if, as discussed above, he will also 3-bet 77+, KT+, QJ? These are not hypothetical questions. The more of these situations you pencil-and-paper before you play, the bigger an advantage you’ll have over everyone else at the table.

Conclusion

Starting off your no-limit-hold’em career by playing the shortstack strategy has inarguable advantages. You can start with a smaller bankroll. Your rookie mistakes will cost less. You will be able to build up a database of player tendencies and hand histories in your hand at minimal risk to you. You will get experience dealing with the other guy having AA when you have KK, or getting sucked out on when YOU have AA and HE has KK. You will see plenty of hands where you’re not sure what the right play is and be able to post them.

And, perhaps most importantly, you will be able to build up a bankroll to start your full- or deep-stack NL career.

Good luck, and let me know what you think in the comments!