Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Some players pride themselves on being great at playing a short stack.
Some players pride themselves on being great at playing a short stack. They convince themselves that playing the short stack requires the mastery of some mystical art form. In reality, playing the short stack is about putting your opponent on a range, sitting down away from the table and figuring out the optimal pushing and calling ranges for each situation. Once your stack dips below 12BBs, pretty much everything taught in this book to this point goes out the window. There is no room at all for fancy plays. In fact, your only real decision is whether to go all-in before the flop. While it may sound like most players should easily be able to play the short stack, the vast majority play either too tight or too loose. As a quick note, if antes are in play, which will be common in most big live tournaments and most online tournaments, you should consider pushing for more than 12BBs. I have seen some players push for as much as 20BBs with hands that play poorly post-flop, although I generally try to push for 15BBs at the most.
There will be a lot of math
There will be a lot of math in the next section because once stacks get short, poker is simply a numbers game. If the math bothers you, ignore it. As long as you follow my suggestions, you will be fine. I will teach you in this next section how to use your short stack like a mace to beat your opponents into submission. As you become short-stacked, you are probably nearing the bubble or getting in the money. In this case there is much more value in shoving than calling shoves. Just know ahead of time that your pushing ranges should be wider and your calling ranges tighter when near or in the money. I will discuss this concept much more in Volume 2.