In some of the turbo sit and go tournaments that you play you’re going to get burned in a hand in the early stages and you’re going to be the short stack at the table. Now if you’re playing at Poker Stars everyone starts with 1500 chips, so I consider myself to be short stacked when I’m around 800 chips. Once you get to 800 chips or less you need to start sitting and not playing any cards until you get an all-in hand.
The short stack isn’t where you want to be early in a tournament, but the good thing is there is plenty of time to recover your tournament still. You only need to come in the top three in a nine player sit and go tournament which means you can still do that from the short stack. A lot of the players will be prone to calling your all-in to try and get you out once you do go all-in as well which is why you need to wait for your monster hand.
If you’re playing on a tight table then you might be able to steal the blinds with your short stack all-ins for a little while as well to build your stack back up. When I’m short stacked I try and steal the blinds once every time around the table so that it pays for my blinds. Then I sit and wait until I get a monster hand and either slow play or push all-in and try to double up.
There are instances where you’ll get burned and lose with your monster hand, but this doesn’t happen the majority of the time so you can’t regret the play. As long as you’re winning the hand when you get the chips into the pot you should feel about the play you made. If you happen to get outdrawn then you basically got burned, which happens a lot in poker and you’ll need to get used to it. You aren’t going to win every tournament, but when you’re short stacked don’t give up. You shouldn’t give up until all your chips are gone and you’ve been eliminated.
Weird things can happen on the poker table and I’ve seen many people catch up from the short stacked position in the past and win the tournament. You’ll need to play a much firmer hand selection and you’ll also need to take some calculated risks when it’s time to steal blinds, but if you play the cards right you still have a chance of winning. Remember you don’t even need to win, you just need to hold off from being eliminated until the final three. Hopefully you don’t need to play the short stack position to often, but it will happen so make sure you’re prepared to play as needed for your position.