No Limit Hold’em Short Stack Strategy Guidance, Playing with a 10BB Stack. Part 1

No limit hold’em has become the real game of choice over the past several years thanks to the television coverage and a wide distribution of on-line capped buy in games. It is rather difficult to penetrate into the game because of its complexity. So, qualified gamblers have more chances to win than the beginners, even if they are widely-read. If you set yourself succeeding in this game as an object then you need experience and discipline. But they both at no limit hold’em come in time.

Luckily, the new gambler, or even the skilled gambler looking for an easy advantage can turn the tables on the contrary by making one simple regulation - buying in for less than the maximum amount of chips that are permited. Later we will discuss all the advantages of this strategy but in this article we’ll acquaint you with the simplest strategy of all which lies in playing with stacks of just ten times the big blind.

Just some sites allow the 10% or 10bb buy in, and the most outstanding among them is the Prima Poker network. A lot of live games let 10bb buy ins as well, particularly at the smaller stakes. We want to gladden you with information concerning how to learn this strategy. So, a few regulations you can take it to sit and go and multi table competitions as well, where 10bb stacks are common.

With 10 times the big blind implies just two moves preflop: all-in or fold. All the other sizes raise sends you to the hand; in cases if reraised or if you observe a flop, you will be getting odds that are so good that you will have to put all your rest chips in the pot and wait for the best. So, the main thing you should know is what hands to push with. In order to learn what hands have value in such a case, you should for certain check out No Limit Hold’em: Theory and Practice for its prime Sklansky/Chubukov numbers that tackle this problem exactly. But we will present a good enough list rested on the book here. The list is are right for a ten handed table.

• Early Position (the first 3 positions): AA-TT, AK-AQ
• Middle Position (the next 3 positions): You may add 99-88, AJ, AT suited
• Cutoff: You may add 77-66, AT-A8, A7-A5s KQ, KJs
• Button: You may add all the pairs, all aces, KJ-KT, K9s, QJs
• Small Blind: You may add K5+, Kxs, QJ-Q9, Q5s+, JT, J8s+, T9s

This is a rather compact range, and in case if you have a read that your adversaries are playing smartly against your pushes then you can add several hands. But according to experience it is most likely that you will be called by a few very poor hands, meaning much of your benefits will come from weak calls made by your adversaries.