What scuppers many players in Texas Holdem poker tournaments is the lack of ability at playing short handed. Some of the weaker players who either bust out early or survive until the middle stages or if they are lucky, just squeeze into the money in most cases have no experience of heads up play or even short handed play. I have seen it countless times on televised final tables. The players who cannot play short handed literally stand out a mile.

They need cards and to be hitting flops to survive and is probably how they got to the final table in the first place in many cases. But as soon as they start playing short handed and the bets and raises are coming from all angles they don’t know how to handle it. But yet as I have previously stated, heads up and short handed situations crop up all the time in ring games the world over and a failure to adjust properly to the smaller field will make you a loser in most poker games.

Once again there is no one glove fits all policy here. Players who only ever desire to play low stakes games and micro limits simply will not have the same need to practice heads up play as someone who plays sng’s for instance or middle and high limit cash games. As I have said, I am not preaching to anyone or telling anyone to follow my advice because I know more than most that what works for one does not work for everyone else.

But I will draw a veil over this topic now by saying that your poker game is seriously lacking if you cannot play short handed and heads up or are unaware of the nuances of this type of poker, much of which comes with experience and feel. How will you be able to cope in the ever growing number of tight aggressive games at the higher levels if you cannot play short handed or heads up?

Sometimes in a game like no limit hold’em, it can only take one player who is throwing a party for the game to be profitable. When you are sitting in a $1-$2 game of no limit hold’em and a live one buys in for $200 and plenty more in his account in which to reload then the game can be very good indeed. More than likely you will notice a waiting list in the lobby of players who are all waiting to take a seat in this particular game.

Being able to win one hundred big blinds in one single hand of poker makes many games that would be otherwise negative expectation games profitable. Quite often I have sat in a no limit game myself where everyone has been playing well. But there might be one player who I know from having played with him before who has the capacity to tilt after a couple of beats or who has a certain weakness with laying down big hands and in my mind, this makes the game potentially profitable.

But limit hold’em is not like that, you extract the money in limit piece by piece rather than in one big blow. You have to continually make better decisions over the weaker players and slowly but surely bleed their bankroll while also enduring many beats along the way. But the capacity to only be able to extract a very tiny amount of money from any one situation or pot makes game selection much more important in this form of poker.

Do not get me wrong here, I am not saying that game selection is not important in no limit hold’em. It is critical in all forms of poker and you simply cannot win in any game unless you have some kind of superiority over at least some of the players in your game. This is why it does not necessarily matter how good a player you are or how much you know about the game. That is only part of the overall equation. What matters most is how good you are and how much you know compared to the other players who are seated in your game.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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