Sit-and-Go Essentials Part 3: Short-Handed

In part two of this series we discussed mid-blind play and breaking out of our standard TAG mold into a more loose and aggressive style.
Now it's time to shatter that mold and get hyper-aggressive.
This is where it gets fun. By now the game will be short-handed with four or five players left.
Everyone at the table will probably be short-stacked in the classic sense of the word. The average stack will only be around 12 BBs.
This is approaching push-or-fold time for everybody.
Post-Flop Play Out the Window
Here's where you'll make your profit. Your average sit-and-go player plays this late stage so badly, it's laughable.
If you play this stage better than they do you will show a long-term positive expectation!
At this stage of the game, post-flop play is out the window - flops are rarely seen.
You have two options: push or fold. And, by god, should you be pushing.

Your goal is to win.

 

Your Goal is to Win, Not Limp Into the Money
Your goal is to win sit-and-gos. You don't want to "limp" into the money.
When you just try and limp into the money you are throwing +EV away.
You have to have the killer instinct to attack and destroy players who are happy just limping into the money or moving up the pay scale.
In poker, if a marked cards player is playing scared, he's exploitable.
Everyone wants to finish in the money; nobody is playing to get eliminated.
You're no different.
But your goal is to win. Therefore, you have to look at the long term and put the short term out of your mind.
Concentrate on making good plays at the correct time and forget about the results.
If you make the correct plays, success will eventually follow.
Get More Aggressive, Not Less

Get more aggressive, not less.

 

As you know, the top three players in a sit-and-go typically get paid. So when you get down to four- and five-handed play, you've reached the bubble.
There will almost certainly be some short stacks thinking if they play ultra-tight they may sneak into the money.
They're wrong. You want to get more aggressive, not less.
When play is short-handed the blinds will already be very high. Your average stack will be just 12 BBs, meaning you'll be losing 10% of your stack to the blinds every rotation.
When the game is short-handed, those rotations come fast and furious, decimating your stack. You're better off pushing all-in without looking at your cards than letting yourself get blinded out.
Do Not Let Yourself Get Blinded Out!
The action is frenetic now and you should be trying to steal as often as you can get away with it.
If you get a feel players are hoping to limp into the money, punish their blinds - they won't defend them.
If you notice someone is calling pushes liberally, then ease up your aggression against that player.
I won't discuss in detail the hands you should be willing to push with. I will, however, discuss the situations you should look for to get your hands all-in.
My advice would be this: Never call off your stack hoping for a coin flip.
If you think you're flipping, you're better off folding and pushing the next hand blind.

Rely on fold equity.

 

Rely on fold equity to supplement your stack.
Your hand value is just something you can fall back on in case you are called!
I'll say it again: fold equity is more important than hand value!
A Couple of Examples:
The game is four-handed and blinds are $150/$300. You have a stack of $2,900.
The UTG player shoves all-in for $3,200. The button folds. You hold 6♠ 6♣ in the SB.
You? Fold.
You're hoping for a flip, best-case scenario. Worst-case scenario, you're crushed.
There's no need to call off your chips hoping for a flip.
If you just wait and shove a hand of your own accord, you'll be better off.
Now let's look at another example:
The game is four-handed and blinds are $150/$300. You have a stack of $2,900.
You're UTG and shove A♦ 8♣. The button calls and the blinds fold. The Button shows 5♠ 5♣.
OK. You got yourself in a flip. You must have screwed up, right?
Wrong.
In this situation we shoved a good ace with less than 10 BBs. Obviously we were hoping for a fold.

Look at the big picture.

 

However, the button decided to race with us. This result is fine.
The small blind and the big blind folded, adding $450 in overlay to the pot. That means the pot is laying us infrared contactlenses better than the 1-1 odds we're getting on our hand.
But wouldn't that then make the pocket fives call correct too?
Yes, in a way it does, but that's looking at this hand in a vacuum and not seeing the big picture.
You're not always going to show up with A-7 here. A lot of the time you'll have a pocket pair that crushes your opponent.
Most importantly, he has no fold equity. He can only win the hand one way: having the best hand hold up.
When we shove the A-7, we can win the pot by having everyone fold or we can win at showdown!
One Last Example:
The game is four-handed. The blinds are $150/$300.
You have a stack of $1,800 and everyone has you covered. You shove 8♥ 9♥ UTG.
The button snap-calls with A♣ K♣. The blinds fold.
Oh noez - you got called by a monster. This is terrible, right?
Wrong.
You're only approximately a 40-60 underdog versus A-K. And guess what? That difference in expected value is made up by the blind overlay.
So in reality you're not in bad shape at all.
No two unpaired cards are that much of a favorite against two other non-paired hands. So don't fret if you get in "bad" - you'll know you made the right play based on your fold equity in the hand!
This is the key to late-stage sit-and-go play. Be the aggressor.
The aggressor has two ways to win, while the caller only has one.
Never allow yourself to get blinded out. Being blinded out means you gave up on your sit-and-go.
Stop trying to limp your way to the small money and start shoving your way to that first-place prize.
Alright, Sometimes You Have to Call
While being the aggressor is the key to a quality end game, you can't just fold everything if you aren't the initial raiser.
Sometimes you're going to have to make calls.

Sometimes you have to call.

 

But there are a few things to take into account before you decide to get all passive and just call.
Obviously if you have a monster, no debate: just get your chips in the middle and hope for the best.
The times I'm talking about are those marginal, borderline situations.
You have to look at your stack. If you're the chip leader with 20+ BBs, obviously you're going to have a lot more freedom than the guy who has seven BBs.
If you have no money invested in the pot, then you should be less likely to want to call off your chips.
In fact you should never cold-call your chips off unless you think you are a favorite and are getting odds on your money.
Another Example:
The game is three-handed. The blinds are $200/$400.
You're in the big blind with $6,500 (after posting your blind). The button folds and the small blind shoves for $1,200 total.
You have 8♣ 9♣.
What do you do? Call.
You have $400 invested already. He shoves for $1,200 total.
This means $1,600 in the pot and you only have to call $800 more. You're getting 2-1 on your call.
The player in the small blind should be shoving almost any two cards here.
Your hand stacks up very well against his range and you're getting 2-1 on your money.
You're only worse than 2-1 against pocket pairs bigger than both your cards, which is highly unlikely.
Chances are you'll get your money in in a 60-40 situation.
With no danger of getting knocked out, if you make 60-40 bets all day getting 2-1 you'll end up rich.
Another Example:
The game is three-handed. The blinds are $200/$400.

Even tight players shove most aces here.

 

You're in the big blind and have $2,400. The button folds and the small blind shoves for $3,000.
You have A♥ T♣.
What should you do? Call.
This one you have to call off your chips. Your hand absolutely crushes the small blind's range.
Even tight players are going to be shoving most aces in this spot and your hand is far better than average.
I would recommend you fold a smaller ace in this spot but with a big ace like A-T you have to make the call.
While I recommend against just calling in my overall strategy, I did have to put this in here.
I'm amazed at the players I see folding hands with incredible odds.
As a rule of thumb, if you're getting better than 2-1 you should have a pretty good reason for not calling.
Click through belowe for the conclusion of this series detailing heads-up play.

Poker: It's About Decisions, Not Results

The point of view expressed in the title of this piece is, I have always believed, so obviously true that no sensible poker player could doubt it.
However, the other day I reiterated it to a not-quite-awful player sitting on my left.
He looked at me like I had just arrived from some other strange, foreign place - perhaps Planet Matusow - and opined, rather unpleasantly:
"What in the f**king world are you talking about? Poker is about results, poker is about money. That is it. That is all it is."
What Really Counts?
This perspective is pretty common among today's players.
You hear comments like, "Well, I haven't played marked cards lenses with her enough to really know but she usually seems to be sitting behind a bunch of chips."
Or, "Yeah, I know that was a mistake but the only thing that counts is that I won the pot."
Or, "You may not like the way I play, but I've got more chips than you do."
Well, there are some minor truths buried in remarks like these.
And, of course, that original crack from the guy on my left is both quite right and quite wrong.

Planet Matusow: Strange place.

 

But, and this is the interesting part, his remark is right in utterly uninteresting ways but wrong in deep and profound ones.
If you don't appreciate the distinction, you'll never become a solid player.
So, a short exegesis on decision-making versus results.
Focus on Money Misses the Point
Every hand in poker is going to confront you with a number of decisions, from initial choices to fold, call or raise, to the wildly complex and gut-wrenching ones that put your entire stack at risk.
In the long run, how you fare will be primarily determined by the decisions that you make.
Yes, of course, we all play for money.
Yes, of course, the final results logged in our records (you do keep records, don't you?) dictate how well we are doing.
And, yes, of course, those who are winning players know this because they have more money than they would have if they weren't playing poker.
But this focus on results, on money, misses the point.
Look for the Underlying Cause

Let's take an analogy from science.
In the sciences, the search is always to find the cause of an effect, the underlying reason why something happens.
More often than we scientists would like, we get sidetracked because we think we've found the "real" cause and stop searching.

Suppose you keep having headaches.

 

Suppose you keep having headaches.
You do a lot of careful experiments and discover that if you take aspirin as soon as the first pains appear the headaches go away.
So, you conclude, not totally wrongly, that aspirin cures headaches.
However, you don't really know why aspirin does this, and that is the important question.
If you were to look more deeply you might discover that aspirin has anti-inflammatory effects and anti-inflammatory drugs cure headaches - a fact that would become critical were you to develop an allergic reaction to aspirin.
You could then seek out some other anti-inflammatory, and continue to garner the benefits.
See the point?
In poker marked cards, if you focus too intensely on immediate results, on money won and lost, you will be doing the same thing.
And the same kind of unhappy outcomes can result.
New Environments Call for New Tactics
How does that happen? Easy.
Two wild, aggressive players sit down at your table and the game takes on a new cast.
You visit another cardroom where the style of play is different.

Say two aggressive players sit down at your table.

 

You move up (or down) in stakes and confront games that have a tempo and structure alien to the one you're used to.
In each case your results will likely change because the decisions you're making are no longer optimal.
It's as though the side effects of aspirin were now getting to you. But if you appreciate the anti-inflammatory factor, life will be fine. Switch to ibuprofen.
In the new game, make different decisions.
Short-Term Focus, Long-Term Pain
Here's a bit of solid advice.
Cut back on the amount of emphasis you put on your short-term results.
If you're typical of most players you're probably worrying too much about what you've lost in recent sessions or being too narcissistic based on how much you're ahead.
Focus, instead, on the decisions you're making.
If you make the right decisions more often than your opponents and commit fewer errors than they do, in the long run the results will take care of themselves.
If you play tournaments this advice is even more useful.
Tournaments have a larger luck factor than cash games. The blinds go up, which puts pressure on everyone to play hands they might prefer to pass on.
The "short-stack" problem forces players to make the all-in move with less-than-wonderful hands. And, of course, much of the game turns on coin-flip situations where if you lose you're gone.

Even the best tournament players can go months without success.

 

Consequently, even the very best tournament players can go weeks, months, years without much success.
If you look just at their bottom line, at the amount of money won in some relatively short time frame (and yes, a year is a short time for tournament players), you might begin to think that they've lost their edge or haven't kept up with the game, or something.
Perhaps they have, perhaps not.
The answer will almost certainly turn out to be based on their decision-making.
Overall Approach, Not How Much You're Up or Down
Of course, finding the balance isn't easy because there is that grain of truth in the comment of the unpleasant gentleman on my left.
Indeed, the money counts; it is the ultimate coin of the realm, the final arbiter of how good a player you are. But if you focus on making the right decisions, you'll be okay.
At the end of the day, don't worry too much about what you won or lost.
Go over decisions that you made. Replay difficult hands in your head; analyze them.
Look over situations where you might have played differently.
Assess the soundness of what you actually did. Honest analysis of decisions made will get you a lot further than basking in the glow of a big win or stewing over a loss.