Playing monsters when short stacked

From time to time, I like to go over previous entries in my blog and see if I am playing any situations in a way that doesn’t seem to be optimal. I think I have found one - the situation where you are short stacked (7 big blinds or less), and get dealt AA or KK.

For me, if I see someone with a small stack limp or raise 3 times the blind in early position, I frequently put them on a huge hand. If you have AK, AQ, or pocket pairs you should push every time with a short stack. Several times, when I am the big stack, I have passed a decent hand in this scenario and it has turned out they have Aces or Kings. However, I am not sure that some players pay the same attention to opponents’ stack size as I do.

Four times this year, I have been in the situation where I have about 7 big blinds, and been dealt Aces or Kings. To me, the best way to disguise the hand is to push all in. If you limp it looks like Aces, if you raise 3 times the blind it looks like Aces. If you push all in it could be anything, particularly if the pot is unraised. However, the results when I have done this have been disappointing - Fold, Fold, Fold and Fold.

I’m going to make a slight adjustment to my game and do a small raise in future in this scenario. I’m going to keep a dirty stack when I get short, and see if anyone makes the effort to count out what I have to see if this improves results in this scenario.

I would add though, that in a major tournament, pushing is still the way to go. When I got short stacked in Dublin, I pushed all in from the small blind with pocket Jacks with ten big blinds, and an unraised pot. Graeme Newman, a top player, called me with K10. No way in a million years he calls if I raise it to 3 times the big blind in that spot.