Playing Short Handed

During my first trip to Vegas, I found myself in the hotel's poker room in the middle of the night. There was only one table running, and it was short handed. The limits suited my taste, so I sat down.

Within two hours I had lost my entire stack. I rebought, and lost that stack about ninety minutes later. I went to bed that morning depressed, not that I lost some money. I was depressed because I was outplayed. I sat down to a game that I wasn't prepared to play in. And it cost me.

I thought I was playing limit Hold 'em. Call with good hands, raise with great hands, show down the winner and pull in the pot. But this was a different game. Players were raising with nothing and then folding to a re-raise. Betting rounds were getting capped on a regular basis. Pots were being pulled with bottom pair and ace high. And players who had bet in previous rounds were folding on the river, which I had never seen in a limit game before. And all because the game was short handed.

I swore to myself that I would learn to play in a short handed game before sitting down to another one. So I read everything I could find on shorthanded play. I played in some single-table limit tournaments and six-man tables. After awhile I learned how the short handed game differs from a full ring game. And I learned how to take advantage of these differences to make them profitable.

There's not much out there on the subject of short handed play because it is a difficult skill to teach. Short handed games are a function of the players who are at that particular table, and so each short handed game is different. There is no substitute for experience when playing in these games, but there are some basic principles to follow in looking at them. Some may seem obvious, but all of them are based on the basic differences between short handed games and full ring games.

Choose Your Enemies Wisely. Short handed poker is more about playing the player than playing the cards. In a short handed game, players who are better than you are going to take more from you than in a full ring game.

The other thing to keep in mind is that when you sit down to a short handed game, you are more likely to be sitting with better players. Think about it. Nearly all short handed games were once full ring games. Some players won money and are still playing. Others went broke, got up, and left. If you are watching a short handed game, you are looking at the winners, so be careful whom you swim with.

Loosen Up, But Not That Much. If there is one rule that everybody knows about playing short handed, it is this: You have to loosen up your starting hand requirements, because the blinds come around twice as fast. That is absolutely true. But most players in these games (including myself at first) loosen up way too much.

In order to play winning poker, you need to avoid two pitfalls: getting slowly blinded to death because you are not playing enough hands, and going broke quickly because you are playing too many hands. Erring in the first direction is going to cost you a whole lot less than erring in the second direction. If you are playing in a 4-8 game with five players, you are paying six dollars in blinds every five hands, which is just over a dollar a hand. But if you see nearly all flops, you are likely to be paying about thirty dollars every five hands (allowing for raised pots), or six dollars per hand. Do you really think that you will win six times as many pots by playing loose as you will by playing tight?

The point is that the more you lower your starting hand requirements, the more pots you will need to win in order to make money. And since you are going into these pots with worse cards, you are truly up against it.

In Sklansky and Malmuth's Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players, they spend just over a page talking about short handed games, and what they say ain't much. I get more from my kids when I ask them how school was. But one point they do make is that playing short handed is just like playing in a full ring game when the first few early-position players have passed.

If you imagine it this way, you will benefit in making your starting-hand decision. If you are in a ring game in late position and the first four guys have folded, you will likely open things up a bit. You might play A-9, or a pair of sixes. But would you play Q-7 suited? What about K-5 offsuit? If you are not playing these hands in that situation, then you shouldn't be playing them in a short handed game.

In short games, I like to play more big cards and fewer suited connectors and little pairs. I might play more nines and tens, but I won't play pocket deuces or 6-7 suited. These are what I call Lottery Hands. They are hands that don't win very often, but pay off big when they do. But in a short handed game, the big payoff is often not there, and so expected value of these starters is not what it is for a ring game.

Position Matters. The dirty little secret in low limit hold'em is that position doesn't really matter all that much. Since you are nearly always going to have to show your hand to win, position is not as important in these games as it is in games with higher limits. But in shorthanded games, even at low limits, position matters a great deal. Remember, in these games, you are playing the player more than you are playing the cards, so the benefit that you receive by acting after your opponents have acted goes up in short handed games. So you should play tighter in early position and looser in late position.

Open with a Raise. If you have a hand worth calling the blind, and nobody has yet made a bet, consider opening with a preflop raise. Doing so will give you three chances of winning the hand.

1. You could take down a small pot right there.
2. You could take down the pot with a bet on the flop.
3. You could end up with the best hand.

If you just call, then you have no shot at 1., and much less of a shot at 2. and 3. The pots you win will be bigger, but as they say, better to make your lay-up now than your half-courter later.

Another thing a raise does is puts you in position to steal the pot on the flop. Being the first bettor on the flop is regarded with a certain amount of skepticism, since everybody knows that this is a primo opportunity to bluff. There is a lot less skepticism if the bettor is also the pre-flop raiser. Few players will want to take on a player who has tossed three bets into the pot unless they are certain that they are in front. And there is very little certainly in poker, so even if you are called preflop, you have another chance to steal the pot after the flop, even from lousy position.

You can fold on the river. In limit games, especially lower limits, it is usually bad poker to fold on the river when you have at least a pair. Sure, there are some exceptions, such when the river brings a four flush or a second ace. But generally, if there are twenty big bets in the pot, you will call one more if you have any chance of winning.

But in short handed games, the math changes. If there are only two players seeing the flop, then there may only be six or eight bets in the pot when you have to make your decision on the river. If you don't feel that your hand is the best, don't be afraid to dump it on the river. The extra bets you save are more chips in your stack.

Use them as a springboard to higher limits. Which brings me to my final point on the subject. Players sometimes ask me how they know whether they are ready to move up to higher levels against tougher company. Generally, these are guys who are playing 3-6 or 4-8, but are looking longingly at the 10-20 and 15-30 games.

Well, the first thing I tell them is to build their bankroll such that they have at least 200 big bets at the new level. If they want to sit 10-20, they need at least $4000. But the second thing I tell them is to play in some shorthanded games at the level that they are used to playing in. Most bigger games have fewer players seeing the flop and feature more sophisticated moves than in low limit. So they end up looking like short handed games, and require the same skills to master.

So in addition to bankroll considerations, I would recommend that players demonstrate some success in lower limit short handed games before taking on the higher limits. It is a chance to learn cheaply, and to gain confidence in your game before making the jump.

These days, I seek out short handed games, both in the casino and online. I find that they are much more interesting, and more profitable for me, since it is much harder for bad players to hide in these games. With some attention to the rules above, and lots and lots of practice, you can profit from these games too.

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