Texas Hold Em Tournament Strategy – Playing Short Stacked

When your Texas Hold Em tournament strategy isn't going so well and you're slightly short stacked your ability to be able to still play effectively with limited chips is truly exposed. No matter how good any plan, or how good its execution, the sheer randomness of luck in poker means that sooner or later you'll take a bad beat and be in a bad position. Being able to play with your short stack will prove to be a crucial skill you will need to be able to survive these situations. And surviving is the number one goal in a poker tournament.

Bottom line is that when you have a short stack you have to wait for a good hand. You need to be extremely selective of which pots you play at, even more so then normal. The general idea is that you wait patiently for some good cards, get your chips into the pot, take it and double up (the small amount you had). You're then slightly more powerful. You may need to rinse and repeat a couple more times until your stack size levels out with the other players are the table before you switch to a different style of play.

If you are ever going to be successful at this you need to learn to protect every single chip you have left with you life. When it comes to the inevitable crunch you need to be prepared to fight to the death for them. The wrong thing to do, which many players overcome with emotion and negativity often do, is throw away their last chips because they lost a pot they thought they should of won.

Its almost a cliche: the player is short stacked, pulls a good pocket pair and enters the pot, turns out the other player has two overcards, its a coin-flip hand, a race to the finish, and the other player pulls a lucky draw taking a higher pair and wins. The first player with the small stack which is now even smaller chucks a tanty, gets angry and fails to see how even though he is still in the game has a chance to win. He gets frustrated, angry, sad or whatever and just gives up trying.

The old tournament slogan "A Chip And A Chair!". Remember that. On numerous occasions a play has come back from having just a single chip to win the tournament. You can come back from a short stack. You aren't out of the tournament until you have zero chips. You must play your short stack smartly and consistently, keep your cool and continue to fight until your back on track.

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Source by Alex Bannon