The short stack

I am looking for some advise here. I have been holdem for about one month now so am still basicly a green rookie. I have read everything i can get my hands on and am quickly becoming addicted to the game. The scenario leading up to my question is this. After entering in my first live action tournament of no limit ($30 entry fee) holdem, i found myself at the final table of ten. I was the short stack with $1000 in chips and the button was to my left. The binds were $400/$800. After being dealt nothing playable, i folded out all away around til the big blind hit me. 60% of my chips went in at this point and i had 8-2o. With a preflop raise to $100, i was forced all in with nothing and was eliminated in 10th place. How do you play in this situation when your not getting the cards? I waited for something playable to move in with but it never came. Any advise for future use would be helpful.

Regards
Dale

Dale welcome. Short stack is the time to push. Meaning dont wait until getting blinded if you have a medocre hand because you will have to push.

If you had decent cards such as Ace high I would push All-in. Ace high is pretty good to go up again someone calling with King high. You might get lucky and double up.

I suppose you were pot committed when the blind hit you w/ 82o?

This reason I say this with Ace high. Last night I am at the final table short stacked blinds were about to hit me, I am dealt A7 of clubs and push all in I am called by King Jack offsuit. Board hits nothing and I double up + the blinds of winning Ace high. Anything w/ small pocket pairs, Ace high and king high I would consider in pushing allin.

Once again welcome to FTR.

I'm no expert, but I've read enough answers to similar question to this to give it a shot.

With $1000 and the big blind at 800, you've got to just pick any 2 cards which you feel will be live and go for it. Preferably before the blind forces the action. The tough part for you is that you are guaranteed that someone will be calling your all in and then all you can do is hope for the best. I'd imagine that since this was your first tourney, that you were just trying to hold on to make that final table, but in order to have a shot to win, you needed to push all in sooner. More like with about 3000. As the final table cut was approaching, you needed to loosen up and be more aggressive. Stealing more blinds to build your chip stack as everyone else tightens up to try to assure themselves a spot at the final table is the way to go.

That's probably enough to start you out. Spend a bunch of time reading through the various posts in the tournament section of the forum. You'll soon have a ton of ideas to try to implement in your next tourney.

Good luck and welcome to FTR!

Dale, you don't mention what happend to leave you at just $1000 in chips. Did you just lose a hand to come to that amount or had you been folding for a few circuits beforehand ? Also it would be helpful if you had mentioned the other stack sizes.

The blinds seem to be quite high. One very important thing you need to do when the blinds get higher is to attempt to steal other players blinds. This can keep your stack at a constant or even slightly rising level until you do hit a good hand. Just waiting for a good hand when the blinds are high will be disadvantageous to your stack size.

When your stack is becoming small there comes a time when you need to throw all your chips in the middle and see how you fare. Different people will give different answers to thi but if I'm down to 3-5 blinds left then any bet I make will be all in. The idea of this is to say to the other players that if they want to win your chips they will have to risk a fair proportion of there stacks. It also means that if you do double up you will win a fair amount of chips. If you wait too long then you get into the situation you had.