Theory: Approach to Very Short Stack Play

[ilya]

I think this is an important question and I also haven't spent as much time as I should have thinking about it.

One obvious observation:

When you're short, but not so short that you've run out of FE, it's often correct to push a very weak hand even when you will be first to act next hand and your next hand figures, on average, to be significantly stronger. This of course is because you have one fewer player to go through if you push now, and this is usually more valuable than having a stronger hand.

However, when your stack has fallen under 2xbb, this may flip. It may now be more valuable to have the stronger hand than to have fewer players to go through, simply because you figure to get called anyway, unless perhaps the BB has something like 2.5-3.5xbb after posting. So compared to a 4-5xbb short-stack situation, I tend to give a lot less weight to position and a lot more weight to the strength of my hand and the BB's chip position.

Well, this seems real obvious to me, but I'll post it anyway for 2 reasons. 1, it might seem more wrong than obvious to someone else, in which case i'll learn something. 2, i never got to be the Section Guy in college.