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Hand Of The Week: Shorthanded Limit For a lot of players, moving up stakes means playing shorthanded games. Even in limit hold’em, a game where tight-aggressive, straightforward play is rewarded in the longhand variety, a player has to know how to change gears when playing shorthanded. It is often said that no-limit is about playing the player and not just the cards, while longhand limit is primarily about one’s cards. If I were to place shorthand limit in this spectrum, I’d have to say it falls between longhand limit and no-limit, in that you still need good cards to win because most hands go to showdown, but your play is influenced much more heavily by your opponents’ tendencies than it is in longhand.
I’d like to discuss with you some hands I played in a recent session of shorthanded limit. This was late at night and the games were extremely juicy, so I decided to play multiple tables of 5/10 and 10/20 6-max for a few hours.
I ran into many loose/aggressive players, those who play many hands and like to raise and re-raise with them. These psychos can be either your downfall or your windfall depending on whether you know how to play against them. The most basic rules for handling a psycho at shorthand are to play a tight/aggressive preflop strategy against them, and not to get involved in raising wars after the flop with them unless you have a big hand. Those loose/aggressive players who make money (and there are quite a few), do so because tight/aggressive and tight/passive players do not understand how to react to the seemingly uncontrolled aggression of the loose/aggressive player. Nevertheless, you should not be fooled; loose/aggressive players have a pattern just as almost all players do. Allow me to give you an example:
I was sitting a 5/10 6-max with 4 players whose styles ranged between tight/passive and loose/passive, and one player who had loose/aggressive written all over him. This players pattern was that he would always raise with just about everything except when he had a real hand – when he had the goods, he would try to pull moves as a setup for later streets. He probably figured no one would understand that a call preflop was a greater indication of strength for him than a raise.
In this particular hand, he called out of the cutoff (one before the dealer button, prime stealing position, which truly sent alarm bells ringing in my head) but I woke up with pocket kings in the small blind. I had figured that my opponent probably had a hand like AK, AQ, AA, QQ, JJ or something else powerful. Nonetheless, the only hand I could legitimately fear was AA, so I raised driving the big blind out and leaving it heads up.
Flop – KQ6 rainbow. No chance of a flush draw yet, and I’ve got the nuts. Rather than try to outfox the “fox” by checking and playing possum, I fired out the bet and was delighted when my preflop assessment rang true because my opponent raised me, and I had to figure him for AK, AA or QQ, although I thought he might slow play three queens. I knew that he had me pegged as tight and simplistic, a style I try to convey when I’m at the table so that my bets are easily respected and I can steal small pots. He may not have believed me to be capable of pulling moves on him, meaning if I called the flop in that position I probably had a hand like AK – vulnerable only to a few holdings on the given board, but unlikely to pull a check/raise on the turn. With three kings, I flat called knowing I was safe from most draws and facing the prospect of a successful check/raise for value on the turn.
Turn – KQ62 still rainbow. I still had the nuts, and I still had my opponent pegged on a strong hand. I checked, he bet, and I raised. He re-raised without hesitation and I decided to drop the façade and cap. At this point, I wasn’t pulling moves any more, I was betting for value as hard as my opponent would let me. Maybe he had QQ after all?
River – KQ622 no flush. This round consisted of my opponent and I firing bets quickly until we capped. It’s unfortunate that internet poker sites tend to cap the river betting heads-up. In a live game, I might have got all this player’s chips because the betting would have been unlimited, and this person was very willing to fire bets, but I had to settle for 4 bets on the river.
When the showdown came I knew I had it, but I wanted to know what my opponent had. I was convinced he had QQ at this point because he’d capped two straight rounds with me. I was wrong – he had AA and had capped the last two rounds with top pair. I guess that my bet-call on the flop had convinced this player that I had AK or at best, KQ, which he had beat by the river, because even a psycho will usually slow down after a cap.
Granted, in this situation the hand would have gone to a showdown no matter what, so it's far from spectacular, but in addition to some hints about how a tight/aggressive player can try to pull moves on the tricky player, there are a few lessons we can learn:
- If a player raises a lot preflop (40% or more) and always raises when they enter a pot, then if they are first to enter and they limp, limping is a sign of strength not of weakness.
- Loose/aggressive players tend to be trickier and pull more moves than any other kind of player, but their moves are also much easier to interpret because you see so many more that you can recognize their patterns quite quickly. In this case, my opponent’s pattern tended to be that he would always raise when opening the pot preflop, except when he had a real hand.
- You can only pull moves yourself on players who will think about them. If you are against a player who just calls everything, then you should just play straightforward and value bet because being tricky will only lead to trouble. Against a tricky opponent who thinks about pulling moves themselves, you can play to outwit them and you do not have to stick to a straightforward style to win.
- Short-handed limit is different from longhand limit, in that your opponents tendencies should play a bigger role in your decision-making in shorthanded.
That’s all for now. Good luck at the tables!
 
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