Getting Too Short-Stacked - Part I
This is Part I of a two-part article on playing short-stacked, but avoiding getting too short-stacked. In this article, I will discuss the concept of M, identify it’s potential inadequacies for home game tournaments, and show an alternate way (The Plateau Theory) to measure your position in a tournament. Part II will discuss the types of hands that players may have when short-stacked and whether or not they are worthy of playing.
Most good poker players are familiar with the concept of not letting yourself get too short-stacked. The main reason is fairly obvious - chips give you flexibility. If you don’t have enough chips to play a flexible game, people are not going to be afraid to call your bets when you can’t hurt them with significant bets on the flop. In fact, if you let yourself get too short-stacked, you can’t even raise enough to ensure you are not giving your opponents the proper pot odds to call with almost any two cards. Who is going to fold anything but an absolutely horrible hand when your bet isn’t even twice the size of the big blind?
Recently, I found myself in short-stacked situations twice and had to push at inopportune times without a lot of chips. This forced me to ask myself two very important questions:
- How short-stacked is “too short-stacked”?
- What hands should I play when I get near the point of being “too short-stacked”?
Obviously, these are not questions we haven’t all asked during our poker educations. In fact, I’m sure most players know at least part of the answer to these questions; however, I’m guessing a lot of players don’t know the whole answer to these questions. I’ll tackle the first question in this article and answer the second question in Part II.
Let’s start by giving reference points for determining the size of your stack. Again, this is not a foreign concept. I believe Dan Harrington, in his ground-breaking series of books regarding No Limit Texas Hold’em Tournaments, credits backgammon great and professional poker player Paul Magriel for being the first to discuss the concept of M. M, simply put, is the number of times around the table you can survive if you fold every hand.
Traditional wisdom says that you should really be looking for a hand to play when your M is ten or less. It also says that if your M reaches five or less, you should be moving all-in with just about any hand in which you can enter the pot first. Again, I think this is something that most players can quote, or at least instinctively know; however, what many players forget is that M is based on a full table. Many times, in home games, we ultimately end up playing on something less than a full table.
So, all Ms are not created equally. An M at a short table is not equal to the same M at a full table. That’s why, I don’t like to think in terms of M.
Of course, Harrington accounts for short tables by introducing the concept of an ”extended M”, but I like to think in different terms. Since many home poker tournaments do not include antes, I like to think in terms of how close I am to the blinds and how far of a drop the blinds will cause me to take. I call this the Plateau Theory. Let me illustrate.
Imagine you are standing on a plateau in the middle of a very steep mountain. There are rocks and plateaus above you that you can use to climb to the top of the mountain. This, of course, is your ultimate goal and you get there by obtaining more chips. There are also drop-offs and plateaus below you. Ultimately, the last plateau drops off into the ocean with jagged rocks and sure death awaiting you. Avoiding this is also a primary objective and you get there by losing chips.
Of course, if you didn’t have to post blinds, you could just stay on your current plateau and live forever. However, we don’t live in a blindless world. So, every time you play a hand, you have to take one step closer to the edge of your plateau. When you post the blind, you tumble down to the next plateau.
Lastly, we also don’t live in a world that doesn’t shake things up on occasion. So, every time the blinds increase, the mountain shakes a bit and some of the plateaus below you disappear. This, of course, means you can take fewer falls before you hit the jagged rocks at the bottom. It also means the falls are longer and hurt a lot more. In fact, the last few falls before you hit the rocks are extremely long and we want to avoid them at all costs. Not only do they hurt more, but they are very hard to climb when we win a pot.
So, to avoid falling into the jagged rocks, it’s obviously very important to know on which plateau you are standing and how many steps you have until you fall off of each plateau. If you know these things, you can figure out your tumble factor. Let’s look at some examples to explain tumble factor.
- With blinds at 200/400, you have a chip stack of 3,000 and 6 players at your table. Therefore, you can take 4 steps before you tumble off of each plateau (6 players minus 2 blinds) and you have 4 plateaus below you. (Remember, the last time you post a blind, there is no plateau beneath you, only ocean). Therefore, your tumble factor is 16 (4 steps x 4 falls).
- With blinds at 300/600, you have a chip stack of 18,900 and seven players at your table. Therefore, you can take 5 steps before you tumble off of each plateau and you have 20 plateaus below you. Therefore, your tumble factor is 100.
- With blinds at 1000/2000, you have a chip stack of 6000 and three players at your table. Therefore, you can take 1 step before you tumble off of each plateau and you can tumble off a plateau 1 time before you fall into the ocean. Therefore, your tumble factor is 1.
Obviously, the lower your tumble factor, the more pressing it is for you to play more hands. In the next article (or cardicle as my friend Grundy of Hell’s Cold Day likes to say), I will discuss how your tumble factor should affect yur play I will discuss hands that you may need to consider playing and explore how low your tumble factor can be before you need to start pressing.
Until next time,
KC
I did not apply your theory very well last night at our Tueday NLHE tourney. I found myself severely short-stacked yet again at the final table. I woke up with AK, re-raised allin, and lost to AQ. No pouting, no whining, just kicking myself for not remembering the plateau theory very well. I will say that I had a hard time trying to justify playing ATC near the end. Not that that’s what you suggested, but I really was card dead for most of the night and I didn’t change gears properly throughout the game. Anyway, I think your theory has merit, but it’s only as good as the player trying to use it. I’m on such a bad run lately and sadly I know why. I have got to learn so much more. I’m over-thinking way too much. I hope someday to be as good a NLHE player as I am a Stud player, but I can see I need more discipline and patience. Thanks for sharing your Plateau Theory.
Pat
Well, Part II of the Plateau Theory is coming soon, but you already have a lot of poker players beat. You understand that you have so much to learn. We all do. Some of us are just more aware of it than others. Keep plugging away.