Player's Stories

Short-Handed Hold'Em:
Back to the Basics
By Jason Pohl

Short-handed poker is mostly an online phenomenon. Shuffling a deck, even for the most experienced dealer, will always take an inordinate amount of time when compared to the instant response of a computer. Thus, shorthanded poker has seen its popularity increase with the growth of online poker. Maybe the relative novelty of online poker (and even more recent appearance of 5-handed table offerings at online poker sites) explains the minimal offerings of literature concerning short-handed poker. But the advantages of shorthanded play make it worthwhile for any aspiring player to focus significant energy studying, even if they will never seek out a short-handed game.

In this article, I will detail three essentials that provide the foundation for how short-handed play is different from ring games. Throughout this and future articles, the main focus will remain on Texas Hold 'Em, by far the most popular form of short-handed play.

Fundamental #1:
Short-handed play is fast (high average hands per hour). This might seem self-explanatory, but its impact is so large that it might not be considered fully at first glance. There are several factors that make online short-handed Texas Hold'Em a very fast game. Online poker is well known to allow players to average twice to three times more hands per hour than its live B&M counterpart.

Shuffling is instantaneous, players can act before their turn, dealers never have to split pots or call the floor, and poker software interfaces let players act more quickly than in a B&M cardroom. And these advantages of online poker are magnified at shorthanded games. Many hands end quickly through blind stealing or folds on the flop, so the instant shuffling has an increased impact. Of course, there are also fewer players who must make decisions. All these effects multiply, leading to averages of 150-200+ hands per hour in many cases.

But what does this mean to you, the aspiring winner? Lots and lots of money, most importantly. Poker is a game of many small edges. The more good decisions a winner makes (+EV decisions), the more money they earn. Simple, eh? Well, short-handed games allow a winner to make more decisions per hour than in a 10-handed game for two main reasons. The most straightforward (but common to all forms of online poker) is simply what we discussed above. There are more hands played per hour. However, a lesser considered reason is the looseness of the typical short-handed player. Due to the high price of the blinds, each player will take part in more hands. More hands played will result in more decisions to be made and each of these decisions is an opportunity for the good player.

So, there's the prospect of making a lot of money fast. But beware. The incredibly fast pace of shorthanded play is a double-edged sword. Many players complain of the very high variance of short-handed tables. On one hand, luck actually plays a smaller role in theory due to the higher number of decision opportunities per hour. To explain this phenomenon, I'll consider a case where a person is flipping a coin. If one person flips a coin only 10 times, there is a significant chance the percentages of 'heads' will vary greatly. It wouldn't be so shocking to see 60 or 70% of all flips end in 'heads' (or tails).

However, if that same person flipped a coin 100 times, the chances of 'heads' coming up 70% of the time are extremely small. The math needed to demonstrate the actual probabilities in our two scenarios is just an expansion of simple arithmetic, but too cumbersome for the purpose of this article. The point is that while luck swings to both good and bad players alike, the variance in general will be lower as more decisions are made.

If we've proven that luck is a smaller factor, why would a high variance be a normal complaint? Simply put, the game often proceeds faster than players can adjust. While conditions can change quickly in poker under any set of circumstances, the damage that can be done in shorthanded play is amplified. Let's say you are playing what is normally a winning strategy for your game. If an opponent crafts a solid strategy capitalizing on your weaknesses, you may not realize you are being outplayed for quite a few hands. The longer it takes to counter, the more money you will lose.

In other words, since your opponents have changed, the decisions you make will have negative expectations. The speed of play may mean that a lot of hands pass before you even realize what is happening. Furthermore, shorthanded play can often be very volatile and unpredictable, for reasons I will highlight in the next section and in future articles. Decisions will be closer to marginal in general than they would be in other games because even great short-handed players are forced to do a lot of educated guessing with very imperfect information.

Fundamental #2:
Short-handed play is usually loose and aggressive. At the time I am writing this article, there are six 10-handed $3/$6 games of Hold'Em at a popular online poker site. The average pot size is $32 exactly. At the same time, there are three 5-handed $3/$6 games at the same site, with an average pot size of $27. Why such a small difference? The answer lies in an oft-used phrase, "Poker begins as a fight for the blinds." In a 10-handed game, tight play is so critical that it often is the biggest difference between winners and losers in a low-limit game. One can afford to wait for premium hands before entering a pot. In a 5-handed game, keeping the same tight standards will be suicide to your bankroll. Each player will pay one of the blinds 40% of the time, constantly putting in money without any guarantee of even reasonable cards.

Sklansky and Malmuth point out the need for far looser standards pre-flop in what is pretty much the only available literature that focuses on short-handed play, Hold 'Em Poker for Advanced Players. As they show with basic math, a good short-handed player will need to play at least 40% of their hands preflop in many. Short-handed players will enter a lot more pots and see a lot more flops than their ring-game counterparts. In addition, the nature of Texas Hold 'Em rewards aggressive play, and this is never more true than in short-handed play. Why is being aggressive so critical?

Consider a common situation where a player raises preflop in a short-handed game and the big blind calls, making it heads-up on the flop. Four small bets are already in the pot. First, a little mathematical background. A player with a non-pocket pair will only improve to a pair about one-third of the time. This average is decreased if one's opponent has a similar holding, such as A9 vs A8. If a player has connectors, such as QJ, QT, Q9, there is an additional chance of between about 7-11% that the flop will result in a straight or open-ended straight draw. A player with two suited cards will flop a four-flush or flush 12% of the time(by the way, a player with suited connecters such as JTs will flop either a four-flush, open-ended straight, or completed hand about 16% of the time). In other words, your opponent will flop a good draw or pair less than HALF the time, but the same applies to you.

After a bet, there would be five small bets at stake. Five small bets is not enough to justify a gut straight draw or draw at overcards without extraordinary implied odds. So, if a player holds QJ and the flop is 2d 5h 8c for example, they will have a very difficult time calling even a single bet. Drawing towards overcards in this case is not justified by the pot odds (there is a 6:41 chance of improving, or about 7 to 1 against making a pair on the turn). Also note that if that QJ is going against a set, two pair, or is dominated by a hand such as AQ, AJ, KQ, KJ, etc, then it does not even have 6 outs and may be drawing virtually dead. The QJ is in a position of vulnerability. A call is marginal at best.

To capitalize on this vulnerability, good short-handed players will often bluff at a ragged flop (or any flop for that matter) since they are receiving 4-to-1 odds for their bluff and their opponent will not have connected with the flop approximately 50% of the time. In response, a good player will often raise back, as a bluff or semibluff, or with as little as 3rd pair. After all, folding too often makes the bluff profitable, so a good player must fight back to keep from being bullied. Now, this process can often result in a conflict that looks more like a game of "chicken" than poker (i.e. two players bullying each other trying to force the other to fold).

This power game creates some difficult decisions for the short-handed player, but the main premise is that most play is aggressive and loose. There is a wider variety of hands played and a wider set of strategies used than in a 10-handed game. Bluffs, semibluffs, semibluff reraises, check-raise bluffs, and bluff raising can all be found at online 5-handed tables because THEY ARE OFTEN EFFECTIVE. In turn, players with legitimate hands bet, raise, and reraise with far more abandon than in a full ring game, and their opponents will raise, reraise, or call with a far wider range of hands. This means a lot of money is going into each pot, often before the turn, even though the action is usually heads-up. It's easy to correlate how the increased range of hands and aggressiveness results in more 'educating guessing' and fewer clear-cut decisions for a good player.

Fundamental #3:
To win at short-handed poker, you must be observant. I might be a poker purist, but I believe good poker should include a high degree of bluffing, aggression, and guts. That's certainly how mass society views the game. But the truth in full ring games, especially at low limits, is that bluffs are usually bad plays, tightness is often a huge factor separating winners and losers, and guts have far less to do with how much is won than Hollywood would ever have us believe.

Utilizing a good conservative strategy, staying patient, understanding pot odds, and some basic card reading skills are the main tools of winners. Online players (including a lot of professionals) sometimes play two or three 10-handed games at the same time because they can win by simply using a straightforward, tight strategy. The same decisions come up repeatedly, and straightforward play takes the cash. These professionals win even though they don't know the tendencies of each player because the advantage of knowing each players tendencies is reduced.

I am not attempting to say that being observant is unimportant in full-ring games. But the fact remains that especially in low limit games, many professionals win without being observant because it is less important than other skills such as card selection (tightness).

On the other hand...
In short-handed games, a winning player does one fundamental thing that sets him or her apart from the losing player. They adjust their own play to their opponents to capitalize on their opponents' mistakes. Being observant and adjusting one's playing style is the most important requirement for being a winning short-handed player. First, with a higher rate of hands played, an observant player can pick up the tendencies and playing style of opponents much more quickly.

Of course, there are many, many individual inclinations that can be exploited with a good counterstrategy (e.g. a player might fold too often to raises or check raises, they might not call enough in the blinds or they might call too much, or a player might fold too often on the end). There seem to be almost infinite possibilities. It might seem obvious, but almost every tendency can be countered. And in shorthanded play, strong card reading, psychology, and observation skills will result in opportunities for +EV players quickly and often.

All a winning player has to know is how to read those tendencies quickly and counter them effectively. But of course, therein lies the rub. Reading trends and understanding other players can be very difficult, and finding the best defense is harder yet. And in the real world, your opponents will not always be predictable. They will vary their play or will adjust to your counterstrategies. Your goal is to prepare ahead, and be ready to adjust quicker than your opponent. To be a winning player, you will always be one step ahead, outguessing, outthinking, and outplaying each opponent.

The subject of short-handed play is so complex and rich because it is in many ways completely different than the full-ring counterpart. There may not be a lot of shorthanded literature available to offer a straightforward strategy that wins, but the relative newness of the game is not the only reason. Instead, shorthanded poker is exceptional because each scenario is distinct, and a winning player, more than anything else, must adjust to each situation uniquely. Until the next article, good luck.