Articles / Annette 15 / 16 January 2008 / 4 Comments

Annette gives an in-depth look at how she goes about playing pocket pairs when short stacked.

Ok, so there have been a lot of posts about this lately, and I made a reply to one of them that I think lot of people missed, so I'll copy it here again. It's a big leak in peoples' games to over value pocket pairs when short stacked, and I often see terrible overshoves because people just don't know what to with them. Here's a chart for what I do in these spots.... now, I'm not saying this is the correct way to play them, but at least it will keep u out of trouble most of the time and the mistakes wont be too big.

Assuming UTG at 9 handed table: (Very small or no ante)

Edit- This of course depends on the table and their calling ranges, but this is just some pointers if you are at a random table with no reads on the players

50x bb+
limp or raise

25x bb +:
raise all pps

20x-25x bb
22-55 fold
66+ raise

15x-20x bb
22-66 fold
77+ raise

12x-14x bb
22-88 fold
88+ raise and call shove

10x-11x bb
22-77 fold
88+ shove

9x bb
22-44 fold
55+ shove

8x bb or less
shove any pp

With antes later in tourneys:

14x-15x:
22-55 fold
66-88 raise and fold to shove
99+ raise and call shove

13x:
22-77 fold
88+ raise and call shove

11x-12x:
22-77 fold
88+ shove

10x:
22-33 (cant decide what to do with 44 lol) fold
55+ shove

9x or less:
shove any pp

Just felt like taking some responsibility and get some poker back up on the board after all this drama :)

Annette

Tags: how to play