If you have the biggest stack and are in command of a table, it’s very easy to be aggressive with big bets and raises. After all, you’re in no real danger of being pushed out of the tournament, and you have the chips to bully other people on the table.
However, things are quite different when you are the short stack and have to fight for your tournament life. In fact, you’ll have to go all-in at some point (or multiple points) just to get back to a decent chip stack. Here are a couple things you should look at before deciding whether or not to go all-in with the short stack.
Hand Quality
This is one of the most obvious things you should think about before going all-in. If you’ve got Q-Q or better pre-flop then you absolutely have to start thinking about shoving. Even a hand like 9-9 or a drawing hand like Q-J might warrant going all-in if you’re really short stacked. Of course, good hands don’t always fall to us when we’re short stacked so there is another thing you should definitely look at.
Required Odds
One more thing you need to be aware of before making the decision to go all-in is what your required odds are. Basically required odds are really good odds that require you to go all-in when sitting on the short stack. If you believe that you’re getting 2-to-1 odds on any hand then you should be shoving.
For instance, even if you think your opponent has A-K and you only have 10-9 then you should still be shoving since this hand will beat A-K almost 40% of the time. When you put your opponents on this kind of range and get 2-to-1 odds or better then you need to be going all-in.
Tags: Betting, Poker Hands, Tips
I figured that the more I read about Poker the better the chance I would have at getting good at it.
No luck so far!