Short Handed Poker Strategy – Improve Your Game

If you are a beginner or a poker player that struggles to make any profit over time then this post could help you towards becoming a winning online poker player. The following advice is very simple but should be understood and appreciated in detail to help you to improve your poker game and make you a winning player.

Learn how calling ranges are determined by the scenario at the table.

An easy bite size sentence which when evaluated will in all likelihood become one of the most important poker lessons you will ever encounter.

What Do I Do Next?

As a casual player with a small ever dwindling bankroll you can find yourselves in a rut during games where you genuinely don’t know what to do with a given hand. If you believe you’ve suffered numerous bad beats over time, your judgement can become impaired and your play can suffer significantly. If you find yourself in this situation you need to go back to basics. Perhaps even step away from poker for a while to allow yourself to clarify your mindset. When you are ready to play, you need to refresh yourself with hand calling ranges and how this determines your play at the table. A bad player will play the cards. A good player will play the cards and their opponents.

Playing Short Handed Poker

It is acknowledged that short handed play is reserved for advanced players. This needn’t be the case when you have a grasp of calling ranges and how the calling ranges are affected by the number of opponents you have at your table. I personally prefer playing heads up poker or sit and go’s with as few players as possible becasue my knowledge of calling ranges associated to the number of players around a table is so strong. Once you get a feel for these calling ranges, you game should improve exponentially when playing short handed.

How to Improve Short Handed Play

There are two key elements that you need when playing short handed –

  • A strong understanding of calling ranges
  • Bravery

In order to understand the calling ranges for a given sized table you can study charts or play theoretical ands through a program such as PokerStove which will give you odds on winning a hand based on starting hands, number of players, etc. However, this will not teach you the real game bravery that you need when deciding to raise big or push all in. In my opinion the way to learn calling ranges for short handed play and to instil the bravery required to be able to push all in or bet big is to play a number of turbo or hyper turbo sit n go’s. This isn’t standard advice that you will see written on other poker tips sites, but the rationale is very sound.

Super Turbo Sit N Go’s?

A fairly standard super or hyper turbo sit n go will consist of 4 – 6 players max and the blinds will often increase every minute. In other words the blinds can increase after every hand or couple of hands. In order to play turbo sit n go’s successfully you need to understand that unless you act decisively and statistically correctly you will likely fail. You could simply sit tight and either let the blinds knock you out or allow yourself to get so shortstacked that effectively you have no raise equity so realistically the whole table could call or raise you with no problems holding the worst starting hands imaginable, or you could play decisively according to your table position and calling range. Therefore, in these sorts of poker games you need to learn a sort of push or fold game. In other words push all your chips into the middle or fold your hand. In doing so you will need to grasp the fundamentals behind what is a good starting hand on a table of say 2,3,4 or 5 opponents and when you determine that you have a strong starting hand based on the number of opponents you need to have the bravery to push all in. This is easy said than done when it is your tournament/game at stake.

Winning Short Handed Play Summary

By playing hyper turbo sit n go’s you will only win hands and progress successfully if you have a grasp on your table situation and the value of your starting hand. Of course there will be variance based on other players that are poor or just reckless but as a training exercise, using turbo sit n go’s should help to sharpen your poker brain as to when to push or fold and give you the bravery to do so. You will then be able to take these skills to standard sit n go tables and clean up.