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 How to play Texas Holdem when you are short stacked.
Playing Texas Holdem when you are short stacked can be tricky, however it is not the end of the world and it happens to all players. Lets face it everyone falls to bad beats or gets unlucky on a big hand. When this happens you have to know how to grind your way back to the top. Many great players get short stacked and come back to win tournaments. This really pertains more to Texas Holdem Tournaments then anything else. If you are sitting at a cash game you can just rebuy, where in a Texas Holdem tournament unless it is a rebuy tournament you are stuck with whatever chips you have and even the Texas Holdem rebuy tournaments usually only let you rebuy for the first hour. So this is something that is going to happen to you lots of times in your texas holdem tournament career.
Ok so lets say you find yourself short stacked after several hours of good texas holdem play, you hit some bad beats and you are the low stack at the table. The first thing to do is to not go on tilt many players experience short stack tilt and make a bad move. The first general rule is that you need to make a move with your remaining chips while you are still competitive and can scare players out of calling you. What I mean is lets say the blinds are 300-600 and you are down to 2500 in chips. You really want to make a move when you have 10x the big blind however here you are down to about 4 times the blind so you need to make a move pretty soon. If you get to the point where you are only double the blind or less everyone will call you and you will be done with this Texas Holdem tournament. So when you get down to about 5 to 10 times the blinds you need to make a move. The mistake most players make is that they wait to long to make a move. Don?t sit and wait for Kings or Aces, move in with a Ace or two face cards or a pocket pair. Think about it the blinds are going up you are about 4 times the blind right now next time the blinds go up you will be 3 times the blind and so on next thing you know you are not going to scare anyone off. If you wait this long you will get to many callers and that will generally spell doom for any kind of hand you have. The key is to pick the right spot to make a move with where you will get one caller or maybe just steal the blinds. Either one of these will work for you.
So if you find yourself short stacked in a Texas Holdem Tournament, first of all don?t go on short stack tilt and make a dumb move trying to get your chips back. Second don?t wait to long you want to make a move while you are still competitive which preferable is about 10 times the blinds. However you will find yourself with maybe 3 to 5 times the blinds depending on how fast the blinds are in the Texas Holdem tournament you are in. when you get that low make a move soon with Ace anything or two face cards and pocket pairs.
Now when in a Texas Holdem tournament do I move all in when I am short stacked? We talked about with what lets talk about when to move all in. This is the tricky part. You don?t want to move in With A rags from under the gun because you may run in to a monster. You want to play from a good position if you can of course if you have AA or something like that go for it. It is important to look at your table position when playing the short stack. Lets say you are in late position and everyone limps in which catches your eye. That is when you want to make a move and hopefully steal the blinds or get heads up action. Always consider the players. If you know the three in front of you would have raised would they have Aces or AK or something like that and they didn?t that means they are most likely playing weaker hands, so make a move. Basically when in good position and you sense weakness make your move. If you wait to long you will get blinded out. This is something I hate to have happen I would rather make a move with a marginal hand and hope to just get one caller or steal the blinds then to sit there and wait for the inevitable doom. I have tried to just hang in and even ACES wont save you against multiple callers. Just for instance in a local texas holdem tournament I made it all the way down to the final 5. I had a bad beat that pretty much put me at 1 and a half times the blinds. I actually catch pocket rockets and get 3 callers. The board comes out crap so things look ok. The only thing that catches my eye is that there are 2 clubs on the board. Everyone checks to the river where we find a third club. Bad news, everyone checks and one guy goes all in. Guess what he has 10 3 of clubs and hit his flush. That really sucked but he was the big blind what was he going to do fold to a half the blind raise. Of course not I would have done the same thing In a Texas Holdem Tournament if things were reversed. So that was the end of that Texas Holdem Tournament for me. So even Aces will not save you if you get that short stacked. So remember look, for weakness, consider positioning and make a move with Ace anything, face cards or pocket pairs and get back in the game. I have seen many times where a good Texas Holdem player will get short stacked and come back to win a tournament.
Good luck at your next Texas Holdem Tournament.
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