Short-Handed and Short-Stacked

The following is an example of why playing the short stack in a No Limit Hold’em ring game is usually less than optimal for good players.
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No Limit Hold'em Cash Game - $0.10/$0.25 Blinds - 5 Players

SB: $16.35
BB: $38.80
UTG: $44.50
CO: $25.10
Hero (Button): $12.30

Preflop: Hero is dealt Jd 9h (5 Players)

UTG folds, CO calls $0.25, Hero calls $0.25, SB calls $0.15, BB checks.

Flop: ($1) Tc-8h-3s (4 Players)

SB bets $1, BB folds, CO calls $1, Hero calls $1.

Turn: ($4) Qc (3 Players)

SB bets $3, CO calls $3, Hero raises all-in to $11.05, SB folds, CO folds.

Okay, a few additional pieces of information. The player in the SB is a novice player, who typically only bets with solid hands, and doesn’t chase much. The player in the cutoff is a solid player, whose play can alternate between loose and tight, who knows pot odds and implied odds.

So, analyzing the hand. I’m the Hero, and I’ve stacked off several chips but decided not to reload to the maximum of $25. I make a fairly reasonable limp preflop on the button, short-handed with my holding. I flop an open-ended straight draw on a rainbow board, and call a bet when the pot is offering me 3:1 odds. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

On the turn, I make the nuts and I am bet into, with a caller in between. If I call the bet, I will have a stack of $8.05 remaining to try and get in on the river. So I consider just calling the bet of $3. However, the turn that gave me the nuts has also created a flush draw, putting a second club out there. A third club on the river could be disastrous to my hand. Similarly, my two opponents could be "trapping" with two pair or a set, and could make their full houses on the river. Hence, I have a very strong, but still somewhat vulnerable, hand.

I choose to protect it.

I decide to put in a raise, forcing weaker hands to pay a good amount in order to draw out on me. How much to raise? Well, my typical raise would be 3-4x the initial bet. However, since the bet was $3 and my stack is $11.05 at this point, such a raise means putting myself all in. Thus, my two options are to fold or push. I choose to push.

My two opponents thought and thought about their actions, but eventually they correctly folded. The SB’s fold was to be expected (it turned out that she was holding pocket Jacks). The CO’s fold was more of a surprise, once I saw his hole cards. He had 10-9, giving him second pair and a double belly-buster straight draw. From his point of view, he probably had a lot of outs to call with. So what caused him to fold?

This was an aware player – one familiar with the concepts of pot odds and implied odds. While he only had to call another $8.05 in order to see the river, he elected to lay down his hand. He told me later that he would have called a smaller bet, or if the SB called. But in my position, I couldn’t really make a smaller bet. Being short-stacked did not allow me to do so. If I’d had another $10 behind (starting out with $22.30 instead of $12.30), I could have made a smaller raise, to say $6 or $7. This means he would only have to call another $3-4 in order to see the river.

Alternatively, I could have still made a healthy raise (say to $9 or $10) and he would have been more likely to call me if I’d had more money behind. As a player aware of implied odds, he realized that if he called my bet of $11.05, that was the most that he could win if he hit his hand. However, if I had raised to $9 and still had another $12 for him to win on the river, he would have had an easier time calling. Make sense? When I'm all in for $11.06, he's risking his chips in order to win a certain-sized pot. However, if I bet $9, and still have another $12 after that, he can call the $9 and hope to win even more money if he hits on the river.

Given the situation, I did not make any errors. I played the hand in a straightforward manner, and I won a decent-sized pot. Nothing wrong with that.

However, I likely cost myself money by playing with a short stack. Even though I had played the hand flawlessly with my short stack, I could have put myself in a situation to win more money if I had rebought to the maximum before the flop. For a bad player, playing a short stack is not the worst strategy because you limit the amount that you can possibly lose. For a good player, on the other hand, playing the short stack often means limiting the amount that you can possibly win.

And money not won is essentially the same as money lost.