Short-Handed Goals

An exploration of the strategic adjustments you should make for short-handed play, through the eyes of two-time WSOP bracelet winner Mark Seif

The folks running the 2006 World Series of Poker made a highly controversial decision when the time came to start this year’s 25th event, the $2,000 No-Limit Hold ’Em Shootout. With 600 players signed up, rather than start with 60 tables of 10, as would be expected, the WSOP organizers chose to go with 100 tables of six, leaving themselves with nice, neat tables of 10 later in the tournament. Some players were aghast at on-the-fly decision, others were not. One pro who certainly didn’t mind too much—at least not from a strategic point-of-view—was Mark Seif. That’s because Seif, an on-air analyst for the Professional Poker Tour and one of the stars of Absolute Poker’s stable, has the utmost confidence in his short-handed skills, which were precisely what was needed to survive the first round with only six players at each table.

“Poker, of course, is highly situational,” Seif explained to ALL IN, giving the standard disclaimer he gives as an instructor who teaches at WPT Boot Camps. “The opponents I’m up against, the amount of my stack, the amount of their stacks, the structure of the blinds and antes, how long the rounds are—all of that is critical to determining how you’re going to play, whether it’s short-handed or full table. But clearly those elements are more of a factor in short-handed play, because (a) hand values go up as the number of players go down, and (b) you have to make more difficult decisions with more marginal hands. And that’s why most people believe it takes more skill to be good at short-handed play or even heads-up play than at a full table. You simply have to make tougher decisions holding more marginal hands.”

Seif likes to illustrate his point with an exaggerated example.

“Let’s say we’re at a 20-person table. What hands would you play if you’re under the gun? You’re waiting for aces, kings, or A-K. Why? Because with 20 hands out there, chances are very good that somebody’s going to have a very big hand, and with 20 people getting cards and who knows how many seeing the flop, you’re going to have to hit the flop pretty hard or have the nut draw in order to stay in the hand. The opposite is true too. When you’re heads-up, you don’t have to hit anything. Any hand that has any sort of showdown value, meaning it can win without improving, is a pretty good hand heads-up: any ace; sometimes, any king; certainly any pair, even deuces. At a short-handed table, I’m going to play hands like J-8 and J-9 far more often than I would in a full ring game. And if I’m playing heads up, I may even raise on the button with a hand like J-9 suited.”

Using those exaggerated examples, you can see how vastly different the starting-hand requirements are with 19 opponents versus a single opponent. Though the degrees are obviously diminished, the same basic principles hold true as you adjust from nine- or 10-handed to, say, five- or six-handed. And no matter how many players are at the table, if you’re going to play a hand, you typically want to raise pre-flop to make it as short-handed a situation as possible after the flop.

“The most dramatic change in how you’re going to play comes in the difference from heads up to three-handed,” Seif explained. “You want to try to get heads up after the flop, because if there’s a third player in the hand, you’ve doubled the number of opponents  you’re up against.

“The only way to win a No-Limit tournament is to get heads up as often as possible. And the reasons for that are simple. The first reason is, you have the highest likelihood of winning the pot when you are heads up. Even aces, against several opponents, is not a favorite to win the hand. It’s the most favored, but it’s not a favorite to win. And another reason why you want to get heads up as often as you can is it gives you the best opportunity to outplay your opponent. If you see a flop five ways, somebody’s going to hit that flop, and no matter what I want to do, I’m not going to be able to do it.”

When playing short-handed poker, the blinds come around that much more often than at a full table, so you have no choice but to play more hands—and if you’re paying attention, you have the opportunity to learn about your opponents that much more quickly.

“With short-handed play, it’s much easier to identify who the strong players are and who the weak players are, because like I said, you’re forced to make more decisions and you have to play more marginal hands. That’s a very important concept,” Seif emphasized. “If you’re four-handed or five-handed, and you notice that one guy’s hardly playing at all, that’s a weakness, that’s a red flag. In the wild, that would be a gazelle with a limp. You will be able to determine who is weak and who is strong more quickly when you’re short-handed. Are they capable of that check-raise bluff? Are they going to bet or raise with a draw on the turn, relying on that fold equity? How do they play the nut flush draw when it’s checked to them on the flop? It takes a lot longer to get the answers to those questions at a full table.”

And that’s part of why Seif had no problem with Day One of the $2,000 Shootout event becoming a short-handed affair. Short-handed play favors the superior players, those who can get inside the minds of their opponents and who can play marginal hands with maximum effectiveness.

And wouldn’t you know, Seif won his six-handed table. Even though he was nearly eliminated very early on, he battled back and proved that, whether short-handed or short-stacked, he’s never short on self-belief.