Short Handed Limit HE

[shipitfish]

As I've mentioned a few times in my journal, I am really starting to prefer either PL or NL betting structures. However, lately I have taken a break from that, and I have been enjoying short-handed limit HE games. I find these games better than full table limit games for a few reasons.

First, a short-handed limit game allows you to legitimately play about 1.5-2 times the number of hands you can play at a full table. This increases variance, but it allows you to be in many more positive EV situations. Limit poker becomes profitable when you can make many good decisions over long periods of time. Short-handed poker gives you more hands per hour, and allows you to play more of those hands. You thus can make more good decisions over the same period of time and have a more profitable session.

The key danger is that you might become far too loose in your starting hand requirements, especially after you watch many of your opponents steal blinds. You begin to think you can raise from the button with any two cards when it is folded to you. You somehow convince yourself K8 is a playable hand. That sort of thing.

However, I have found if you overcome that tendency, and stick to solid starting hands (but looser than a full game), and don't start calling raises cold preflop with junk, a solid player can do well in short handed limit HE.

Most of your opponents have picked the short handed game so they can be overly aggressive with marginal holdings. This means they can steal more blinds than you, but in most online short handed games, I don't think blind-stealing is the key profit center. The blinds defend too much with holdings that are slightly better than your stealing requirements anyway. In essence, solid tight aggressive poker works, more or less, just as well as it does at full games. Once I started making slight modifications to my full table game for short-handed games, rather than a full "bluff overhaul" I originally tried (that cost me $4k at 10/20 short handed), I have been able to hold my own and make better profit.

The variance can get annoying. You can get a reasonable starting hand, hit a flop, and get rivered six or seven times in the matter of just a few hours. So, $600 of variance in a 10/20 game isn't that uncommon. But, if you can handle that, the games are pretty good.

On final nice thing about short handed limit is that the pot odds rarely end up so big that two players are simultaneously correct in betting and in calling that bet. This is one of the most annoying aspects of limit play: you can bet your hand for value even while someone is able to call you with odds. You both are winning, and you both are losing at once. In short handed limit HE, since the pots are smaller preflop, your bets and check-raises on the flop have more strength and can force draws to pay more than they are worth.

Comments

Re: My own on-going debate of short-handed play...

[(Anonymous)]

Frankie,

Thanks for mentioning us in your post and gl at the tables.

-Lloyd

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