Short Deck Starting Hands

Posted : admin On 4/3/2022

For a guide to beating short stack poker players, check out the 'Crushing Shortstackers' concept video.

There are always going to be times in your poker career where you will find yourself as the short stack at the table and probably having a smaller stack than the rest of your opponents.

It may be because you are in the middle of a tournament and had a bad run of cards, or because you simply enjoy to buy in to cash games with a short stack.

But for whatever reason you are playing with a relatively small amount of chips, it is good to be able to understand and employ a good short stack strategy.

In short-deck games we have to recalibrate our sense of relative hand strength to make any sense of the board. 25% of all flops are paired and 36% of flops permit at least one straight. Once we factor out the remaining monochrome boards we are left with a paltry 37% of. With only 630 starting hands possible compared to the usual 1326, we can expect to see powerhouse starting hands much more frequently. For example, pocket aces will arrive in front of you every around once every 100 hands, instead of every 221 using a full deck. Ace-king is also seen twice as often.

How to play the second tier of top short deck hands(TT, T9s, QTs, and QJs). Would love to see your analysis of the other starting hands/short deck in general. October 31st, 2018, 2.
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Short deck hold’em hand rankings Image credit: Triton Poker. Hand rankings are different in SDHE, with a flush beating a full house. Straights hit more frequently, and if you have open-ended straight draw on the flop, you have a 45.5 percent chance of hitting the straight on the turn or river, compared to 31.5 percent in traditional Hold’em.

What is a short stack in no limit Texas Hold'em?

The typical short stack in any cash game or tournament will have 40 Big Blinds or less.

However, there are varying degrees of short stack poker as a 10BB stack will require a slightly different strategy than a 40BB stack, and it is important to be aware of these differences.

You may have noticed that the term ‘short stack’ is determined by the size of your stack relative to the blinds, and not relative to the stack sizes of your opponents. Therefore even if you have 30BB and your opponents have 20BB, you are still considered to have a short stack, and so you should continue to utilize a good short stack strategy.

Short Deck Poker Starting Hands

How to play with a short stack.

Having a short stack means that you have less room to make plays at the poker table. Bluffs and advanced moves (like float plays) are formed from being able to make educated checks, bets, calls and raises on each round of the hand, so having a short stack will reduce and sometimes eliminate any room for special maneuvers by both you and your opponents.

Furthermore, the general structure of a no limit Texas Holdem game is that the bigger bets will be made on the turn and river, as the preflop and flop rounds are usually set-up rounds that build the pot and prepare the hand for action. The fact that we have a short stack means that we will rarely be making it past the flop in terms of betting as we will not having enough chips to continue.

With a short stack, most (or all) of the action will be taking place on the preflop and flop betting rounds.

Hands to play when short-stacked.

The fact that we have little room for movement and that our betting will cease at the flop means that we should be playing big heavy hitting hands that will make strong hands at the flop, rather than smaller hands that have ‘potential’.

We should avoid hands like suited connectors and small pocket pairs, as these hands are profitable when we have a deep stack, as our implied odds are there to compensate for the likely event that we miss the flop. In general we are best entering pots with are big suited cards that can make top pair or better at the flop, although we should exercise some flexibility in starting hand selection depending on the size of our short stack.

Below is a table of the hands we should be looking to play depending on our situation:

Starting hands chart.

Note: This starting hands chart is designed for tournament games where you are pressured to make more moves as the amount of chips left in your stack decreases. This table is not designed for short stack cash game strategy where you have the option of reloading again and again.

40BB or less.

30BB or less.

20BB or less.

10BB or less.

As you can see, a lot of emphasis has been placed playing big cards that can make top pair or better, which will often be the best hand on the flop. As you should remember it is unlikely that we will make any more bets past the flop betting round, so we should be more than happy to be making a good pair and get our money in on the flop.

You may notice that hands that include aces have been given a lot of weight, especially if you are a very short stack. This is because of the fact that as a extremely short stack, it is more than likely that you will be pushing or calling an all in on the flop regardless if you have caught a piece of it or not. Therefore if we are holding an ace, we will have a better chance of winning with a high card against an opponent in the event that they did not make a pair either.

How to play these hands.

When we are dealt any of the above cards that are within our range depending on the effective stack sizes, we should always be raising when entering the pot. It may seem like a good idea to limp and try and catch a good flop for cheap, but it is more profitable to raise and build the pot for when we hit our hand, which we are more likely to do if we are holding a strong starting hand.

With a stack of 10BB or more we should be looking to raise around 3 or 4BB if we are first to enter the pot. However, if we have 10BB or less, it will not be too bad of a play to push all-in straight away, as any call from a 4BB raise will leave us completely pot-committed anyway. With 10BB or less, you can think about using the stop and go play also.

On the flop we are usually reduced to going all-in or folding as a short stack. The smaller the size of our stack, the more inclined we should be to calling or pushing all-in as we are more likely to be committed to the pot. The shorter the stack, the less the flop will matter to us. However, if we have around 30/40BB, we can be a little more selective because we will not be pot committed and have the opportunity to wait for a better spot.

The shorter your stack, the less post-flop action you are going to deal with. So it's important to have a strong hand that has a good chance of winning after all 5 community cards have been dealt.

Nevertheless, if we are pot committed and will be moving all-in regardless, it is always better to make the all-in bet rather than calling if possible. This is because by betting we are giving our opponent the opportunity to fold the best hand or a potentially winning hand, which is something that is not available to us if we are calling the all-in bet.

Short stack tips overview.
Play simple ABC poker. Avoid attempting to bluff and just bet when you have a strong hand.
Only enter pots with premium hands.
Fold small pocket pairs and suited connectors as you have do not have implied odds.
Make strong 4BB raises before the flop.
Be prepared to move all of your stack in to the middle before or on the flop.
Leave the table if you win a big pot (and intend on playing short-stacked).

Short stack strategy evaluation.

Good short stack strategy is all about pushing every little edge that we have. Just because we have a smaller stack, it does not mean that we have less chance of winning any individual hand, it just means we have to adapt our play a little differently to each situation.

Nevertheless, we will be facing an up hill battle if we are in a tournament as each pot we enter is more likely to involve putting our tournament life on the line. At some poker sites, the structure of the faster tournaments will mean that you will spend the majority of the game as a short stack, which is a good way to learn how to play good short stack poker.

We should always look for the most profitable situations and get our money in when we think we have the best of it, and we should always prepare for luck to play its part in each outcome. Playing a good, sound short stack strategy does not guarantee to save a tournament life or secure a double up, but it will improve your chances of coming out on top in the long run.

In cash games, you cannot expect to win every all-in, but you can still play a profitable game by picking the right situations and trying to get your money in with the best hand.

Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy.

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In the first part of the article we looked at Six plus Hand Rankings, where it became clear that the 16 cards missing from the deck in this variant leads to a slight, but important, changes in how strong the starting hands are which we will receive.

Let’s take a look at this in some more details, and work out how this affects the strategy of our game.

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Texas Hold'em Starting Hands

Pocket Aces

If we look at traditional Texas Hold’em starting hands, we would expect to get our beloved AA about once every 221 hands, so what about in our new version of the game?

Well, without troubling you with the maths (I CAN do it, honestly!) the answer is you’ll get your pocket rockets once every 105 hands, which is more than twice as often as in Texas Hold’em!

Naturally, what goes for aces also goes for the other pairs – you’ll have a pocket pair more than twice as regularly in Six plus Hold’em (as will your opponent! Don’t forget this important consideration).

Are there any other changes we need to know about regarding starting hands?

Well, let’s take a look at a few examples and see how they compare to normal Texas Hold’em…

Let's Say We have JJ

A naturally tricky starting hand in Texas Hold’em, but one we would probably open-raise with pre-flop. How does it fare in Six Plus?

We need to realize that instead of beating nine other pairs pre-flop, now it is only a favorite against 5, and still a dog to QQ, KK and AA. So it is not as strong in this respect.

However, because 3 of a kind now beats a straight in Six Plus, flopping a set becomes very strong against many hands – flushesare harder to come by, as we saw previously, because there are only nine cards of any single suit available in the deck.

So, how often will our smaller pairs flop a set? In Texas Hold’em it’s about 11.8% or roughly one time in eight. In Six Plus, we will do the maths quickly (just to prove I can!)

There are 36 cards in the pack, we have – let’s say again – JJ in our hand. So there are two jacks left in the 34 remaining cards.

The flop probabilities work out at 2/34 + 2/33 + 2/32 = 0.18, so basically one time in five when we have a pocket pair we will improve to a set on the flop. Not too shabby!

What About the Hated 72 Offsuit?

In traditional Texas Hold’em this is the worst starting hand, and almost completely unplayable. Well, as you can probably work out yourself quite easily, in Six Plus the equivalent hand is J 6 offsuit, which, let’s be honest, would rarely be played even in our normal game!

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Short Deck Starting Hand Chart

Playing AK Becomes an 'Interesting' Problem

We know how difficult it can be to play this hand in Texas Hold’em, both pre-flop and post-flop, so how about in Six Plus?

Well, first off, we will be dealt AK about 2.5% of our hands – which is quite a lot of the time, maybe once every five or six rounds at a full ring table, so it’s important enough to learn its worth in Six Plus Hold’em.

If we accept that suited versions become a lot more valuable - flushes beat full houses in our new version - then it can also make sense to play AKs slower than usual. Mixing our game up with AKs hides our play better, while AKo is still a very strong hand which we can 3-bet and even consider stacking off with.

Small Pairs

Of course 66 now becomes the smallest pocket pair. In Texas Hold’em we could consider calling pre-flop raises with this hand if the price was right – flopping a set and cracking a higher pair is our main goal – but now we have to consider that we are essentially playing 22 in a game where set-over-set sees our 6’s screwed, although on the plus side they do now beat straights!

Relative Hand Values

We need to be aware that these change a fair bit from Texas Hold’em, since stronger hands in general are being played across the board. Top pair, top kicker is nowhere near as strong – in fact it is very unlikely to win on its own as a best hand at showdown in 6-max or full-ring when we play Six Plus Hold’em.

There is also the ‘alternative river version’ of the game to consider, when receiving an extra hole card means that hand strengths can become stronger still.

So, in general two pair would be a median winning hand at full-ring – a useful thing to know when planning your hand strategy!

Short Deck Best Starting Hands

We will look at the change in Pot Odds in part 3, but a casual glance at things like ‘drawing hands’ shows that we are more likely to his many of them, as we have fewer cards left containing the same number of outs. For example, a gutshot – where any of four cards hits for us – now gives us 4/31 chances to hit after the flop, as opposed to 4/47 in Texas Hold’em – a significant difference indeed!

So, we’ve now seen the basics of the game – Hand Rankings, how starting hands differ – and next up are the ‘Pot Odds’ calculations, which will affect our strategy considerably…

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Short Deck Hold'em Starting Hands

Six Plus Hold'em Hand Rankings
Six Plus Hold'em Rules & Strategy
How to Get in the Zone and Play Your Best Poker