In poker, your chips are your lifeline; the more you have, the longer you can stay in the game, which is why you must keep an eye on your stack and seize every opportunity to grow or maintain it when you’re at the poker table.
However, dwindling chips are unavoidable in a game with multiple variables like poker. Another player may go all in at an unexpectedly wrong time, or you could miscalculate a hand and watch your chips get absorbed by the pot. When these things happen, you’ll be left with what’s known as a short stack.
A short stack in poker refers to having fewer chips than the average stack size. This puts you at a disadvantage because you have less wiggle room for mistakes. Nevertheless, all is not lost when you’re low on chips at a poker match. You can still turn the tables by using the right strategy.
Here are some tips on how to play poker when you’re low on chips:
1) Be aggressive but selective with the hands you play, especially before the flop.
It might be tempting to limp or limit your bets to the minimum required amount when you have a short stack. After all, your goal is to preserve what chips you have left. But this isn’t necessarily the most profitable move.
Instead, you want to take charge of the pot by raising or shoving all-in. The catch is that you must carefully pick the hands you do it with. You can’t just go all-in with any two cards; you need to have a combination that has potential. This strategy is especially valuable pre-flop since your actions at this stage of Texas Holdem poker will significantly impact the rest of the hand, not to mention you potentially steal the blinds.
If you’re seriously short-stacked, it’s best to play only premium hands. Your position at the poker table should also influence how you select your hands, and you must be able to adjust your range depending on where you’re seated.
An aggressive but selective playing style will give you a better chance of accumulating more chips than limping. Rather than hold tightly onto your chips, you need to actively invest in the game to increase your rate of return.
2) Go all in with your draws.
Going all in is one of a short-stacked player’s most powerful weapons. It puts pressure on your opponents, which can lead them to fold and thus allow you to take down the pot early in the game. Wagering all your chips when you’re already low on them, after all, shows that you’re confident in your hand.
You must take advantage of this opportunity by shoving all in whenever you can, and holding a draw is one of the best times to do so. A draw is a hand that doesn’t currently have the best chance of winning but has the potential to improve with more cards in later streets.
Say you start a game of Texas Holdem with an Ace of Hearts and a Three of Hearts. This gives you the potential to hit a flush (a hand of five cards of the same suit) by the river.
You don’t want to wait until you have something strong like a two pair or a made hand before you go all in. These hands rarely come around, and you risk losing more chips to your opponents before getting them.
You should instead be able to push all in with more hands mid-game. Draws are the best type of hand to do this with since they have a lot of equity, meaning they have a good chance of winning even if your opponent calls.
3) Study profitable hand ranges.
As mentioned, a short stack leaves you with less wiggle room for mistakes, so your actions must be well-calculated. You must know how to value your hand properly, and one way to do this is by knowing which hand ranges you can productively raise or shove with.
A hand range is the set of hands a particular player would theoretically be playing in a particular situation. You can use this information to better assess your hand’s strength and how it fares against your opponents’.
To learn how to play poker effectively with fewer chips, experts suggest noting these hand ranges down in charts and matrices, which you can build with poker software or on your own, and learning them by heart so you can quickly apply them in games. You’ll be able to carry out techniques like the above better when you have this information.
However, it should be noted that creating and mastering such charts will require time and effort. You need to learn how hand ranges work and change based on factors such as your opponents’ playing styles and tendencies to better adapt your strategy on the fly—and one way to do that is by playing more games.
4) Bet less than half the pot.
How do you play poker when you’re short-stacked and don’t have cards you can confidently raise or shove with? By bluffing, of course. And when you do, it’s best to keep your bets on the smaller side. A common rule of thumb is to only bet about 30% to 40% of the pot, especially if you’re only trying to get your opponents to fold. This way, you lose fewer chips in case your bluff falls through.
Other players will know you’re short-stacked and be less likely to believe your bluffs. So it’s only safe to keep your bets small.
5) Capitalize on your opponent’s weaknesses.
There are different types of poker players, and it’s essential to identify which category your opponents fall into. By doing so, you’ll be able to recognize habits, tendencies, and weaknesses that you can play off of.
Tight players play few hands and are generally easy to read. They tend to have strong holdings when they do enter a pot, though they’re more likely to fold when they face aggression.
Loose players, on the other hand, enter a lot of pots and play a wider range of hands. Putting them on a particular holding is harder since they don’t have many patterns, but they’re also more likely to bluff.
Try to profile your opponents at the table and, based on what you know about them and their playing style, select the best strategy to play against their weaknesses and take more chips from them.
A short stack can be challenging to play, but winning with one is not impossible. With these tips, you can make the most of your chips and put yourself in a better position to win more games.
See how these strategies work for you the next time you find your chip stack dwindling at a poker match or an online game on sites like GGPoker, the world’s largest poker room.