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Shorthanded Poker Strategy For many players, shorthanded poker offers many advantage over full ring games. You can play more hands and play them more aggressively, so there is less waiting. Also, there are plenty of opportunities to make creative plays that may be less successful in full ring games. On the other hand, there are also disadvantages. Your swings in this game will be very high because you're playing more hands and you have to call with less of a hand. Also, in shorthanded poker there are more situations where you will play exactly the same as the bad players, so your edge per hand played is lessened. However, this is balanced out by playing more hands.
Even if you do not expect to find yourself in a shorthanded game, these strategies will help you in your full ring game when the first several players have already folded, or at the end of a tournament when you are down to the last several players. (Although if there are still several players in, your tournament principles - namely the gap concept - should override your shorthanded strategies)
Enough talk. On to how to beat these games!
Note: I consider shorthanded play to be six-handed or less. With seven or more players, you should be making slight adjustments from a ten-handed game, but not major ones. Also consider how shorthanded your game is. With three or four players, you need to adjust a ton more than with five or six. This section does not really address heads-up play, which is more about pure psychology than cards. If you have nowhere else to turn for heads-up advice, just extrapolate these strategies to an extreme, and remember to do a ton of betting.
Recommended Reading
The ultimate resource for shorthanded play is Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players by Sklansky and Malmuth. This book clearly explains how and why your strategy changes in shorthanded hold 'em. The Complete Book of Hold 'em Poker by Gary Carson also includes a good section on shorthanded hold 'em play.
Picking a Game
There are two ways to play shorthanded: sit at a new table and start a game, or sit at a designated shorthanded table which only allows five or six players to sit at once. (Most sites also include heads-up tables, but this section will not address them, mainly because the strategy for them is hard to put into a guide, and also because I don't play them regularly.)
For many reasons, limit hold 'em is the natural choice of game to play shorthanded. First, of course, hold 'em is the most popular online game, and most online cardrooms include hold 'em tables that are capped at 5 or 6 players, which are not offered for other games. Pot-limit and no-limit hold 'em are also decent games to play shorthanded, but they are not as popular, and few sites offer big-bet tables that only allow 5 or 6 to sit down.
7-card stud and Omaha high are also fine games to play shorthanded, as are 5-card draw and Pineapple at sites that offer them. However, high-low split games do not lend themselves well to shorthanded play, because the rake in a split pot in a shorthanded game can be a real killer. I would only recommend that you play shorthanded high-low against players who are very bad at it, which essentially means that they don't adjust from full play and will fold too often when you bet.
Picking a Site
All big sites have some tables that are devoted to shorthanded play. Here are some of the questions you should ask:
- Do the shorthanded tables seat six players or five? (At the moment, Paradise seats 5 at their shorthanded tables, while Party, UB, and Stars each do 6)
Ironically, if you prefer fivehanded play, you may want to choose the servers with 6-max tables, because a player will be sitting out (or the seat will be empty) a large percentage of the time.
- What is the rake structure like for shorthanded games?
The rake can be a killer if only a few players are seated. The big four sites use the standard rake structure of a maximum rake of $1 for 2-3 players, $2 for 4-5, and $3 for 6+. However, you should check if you are at a new site, which may not have a smaller maximum rake for shorthanded play.
- How do the opponents play?
As usual, this is the most important question. Unfortunately, it's harder to profile a good lineup of opponents for shorthanded play, because the tight opponents that you can't win anything off of in a full game are now the donators, since they will be folding too often. I would say that the most important thing is that you find passive opponents. Loose-passive and tight-passive types are both good opponents in these games.
That said, I've never seen a site where the shorthanded games are anywhere near unbeatable. I would recommend that you hop around and just play where you feel comfortable and find the most passive opposition.
What Adjustments Should I Make?
Play Loose
There are two general reasons to play looser in a shorthanded game:
- It takes less of a hand to win, on average - The ante is proportionally higher per hand
The latter is especially pronounced in games played with blinds as opposed to antes. (Nowadays stud games are the only ones online which use antes.) In ante games, the ante is still slightly higher because you are paying the bring-in more often, but you don't need to play that much looser to survive.
In games with blinds, you must loosen up considerably when playing shorthanded. Consider a five-handed hold 'em table. You must pay the blinds every five hands, as opposed to every ten. This means that the "ante" is twice as high per hand. It is a fundamental principle of poker that with a higher ante, you must play more hands unless you want to be anted to death.
As long as there are between four and ten players dealt into the hand, I believe you should be seeing about the same number of flops per round of deals - approximately two. (This is on average, not saying that you should see two flops each round.) With fewer than four players, you should be seeing about half the flops, depending on the situation.
Big pairs in hold 'em are often big enough hands that they are worth slowplaying on one round, but don't do this too often, because you will often find out that you have missed out on a bet. However, checking the flop in order to induce an opponent to bet the turn when you have a big overpair in the hole may be a play worth making. Either way, a big pair in the hole is a much better hand in a shorthanded pot.
This means you have to be playing a lot of hands that you won't be playing in a full game. What sort of hands? Hands that you would not play in a full game because they tend to be dominated even if they hit the flop (such as ATo, A9o, KJo, KTo, QJo, QTo, JTo) become good hands in a shorthanded game. The hands headed with an ace or king are usually worth raising with pre-flop, and the others are definitely worth a call unless someone has raised already.
Because you will have fewer opponents who are betting more aggressively, the value of drawing poential in hands is severely reduced. This applies especially to suited connectors, which are virtually unplayable in shorthanded deals unless they also have some decent-sized pair potential (in other words, 98s is usually playable, but 65s is not).
Small pairs are a unique hand in shorthanded play. They prefer five-way action or heads-up action, but not in between. With your implied odds you can usually play them for one bet preflop, but for two or more bets you should not play them unless it will be heads up (and you should often be willing to invest a third bet to get it heads-up).
In Omaha, hands that contain a few high cards (like AQT7) that you would not normally play, are now definitely worth at least a call. Big pairs go way up in value since they may win unimproved. Hands like 7654 double suited, like suited connectors in hold 'em, go down in value, although they are usually playable anyway. You still don't want to be playing small pairs, since you are not getting odds to hit a set. Suited cards are naturally less of an advantage shorthanded, just like in hold 'em.
In 7-stud, all pairs are generally worth playing, although if there is an opponent who is playing solidly (bad in a shorthanded game) and he raises, get rid of small pairs. Other hands that are better in shorthanded play are (AK)9, or (QJ)K. You want to play to make a big pair or decent-sized two pair. Drawing hands go way down in value, because you won't be getting the odds to play them and the payoff is smaller when you do. A three-flush is only a good hand if you also have at least one big card to give you hopes of winning with a big pair.
Once the flop hits, a hand like bottom or middle pair is often worth playing even though you would certainly fold it in a full ring game. In Omaha, hands like top and bottom pair or bottom two pair, good candidates for the muck in a full game, are worth playing aggressively. 7-stud, any pair is often a hand worth pushing, especially against a loose opponent who is liable to be in there on anything.
One important concept, which extends to all games, is that your opponents are going to be doing more bluffing, because in most pots there will only be one or two players they have to get out in order to win the pot. This means that you will need to do a lot of calling to prevent him from profiting from an automatic bet. Also, you will not need as much of a hand to beat them since their betting standards will be greatly lowered.
Play Aggressive
This is especially true in hold 'em. A single opponent will only flop a hand worth calling your bet (a pair, two overcards, or a draw of a gutshot or better) about half the time even if he had a decent hand preflop. This means that you need to be doing a lot of betting, both on the flop and beyond.
In addition, since your opponent is liable to be calling with anything, you should make many more value bets than in a full game, as the psychology of the game has changed. With your opponent in full bluff-catch mode, you should be willing to bet hands as light as third pair with a decent kicker, in the hopes of getting a call from a worse hand. On the other hand, with a hand like ace high, it is almost always better to check and hope for a cheap showdown. Your opponent is unlikely to lay down any pair on the river in these shorthanded contests, but he may get tricky and raise you with a busted draw. It is better to simply show your hand down and hope it is good.
Even in other games, in shorthanded pots, there will be a high percentage of situations where no one has a hand worth considering. Your bet or raise can easily mean the difference between winning or losing the pot, so don't be afraid to make it. If you do not play very aggressively, you cannot win in a shorthanded game.
Of course, you must pick your spots well. If someone only bets when he has flopped something good, don't waste your money trying to run him off his hand. You will get called more often in a shorthanded game, so save your outright bluffs for situations where you think there is a good chance no one has anything.
Use Your Opponents' Aggression Against Them
Because you can expect your opponent to automatically bet in a lot of situations, you will need to adjust your strategy. If you are holding a good hand and facing a bet in a heads-up pot, you will usually want to wait until the river to raise, to encourage your opponent to bluff more of his chips away. Also, you should frequently be going for check-raises when it looks like your opponent will bet virtually every time. This accomplishes several purposes: it gets more money in the pot, often ties your opponent to the pot psychologically, and teaches him that in the future he cannot automatically bet whenever you check.
Sklansky and Malmuth, in the short-handed section of Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players, recommend that when you have called a raise (or reraised) out of the blinds pre-flop, you should check with about the top 20% and bottom 20% of your hands, and bet with the rest. This is a very good guideline that can easily be extended to other situations or other games with a little effort.
Make More Marginal Calls
Your opponents will be playing loose and aggressive as well. (They didn't choose a shorthanded table to get blinded and bluffed to death.) If you have any sort of hand it is usually worth trying to catch a bluff, because it is much more likely that an opponent will bluff here than in a full game.
These kinds of plays include, but are not limited to: calling with any pair on the river in hold 'em, calling with any pair on the river in stud, calling with any two pair on the river in Omaha.
Stop and Think
This is more applicable to live play than online, but it is still a concern online. Shorthanded, you will encounter many situations where you have a close decision whether to call or fold. If you stop and think only when faced with these decisions, your opponents will realize what has happened, bet again, and usually just take the pot from you on the next street.
To discourage this play (and take advantage of it), you should occasionally take some time to think when you have nothing to think about. Don't delay the game; five to ten seconds is enough. Not only will you likely encourage your opponent to bet into you when you are holding something good, you may discourage them from making this play against you in the future, when you really were thinking about folding for awhile.
Don't Play Like This in a Full Game
Also, you have noticed that this is not a complete guide to winning. For example, I have not included any starting hand guides. That is for two reasons: First, you should go and buy the books I recommended above, which are written by much better players than myself; and second, there is no substitute for experience in shorthanded poker. Also, there is so much room for psychology in this game that your opponent makes a huge difference, so it is better to work on your ability to size up an opponent.
Good luck!
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