Online Poker Forum - Short handed starting hands?

quick98ta · Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 11:07 pm Post subject: Short handed starting hands?

Well i think i do pretty well full ring but i have a few questions about when to broaden your starting hand selection and what hands to start including.

My guess is that short handed the vaule of good stating high hands goes up but does than mean say hands like 743 or 653 lose value?

low pairs? 3 to a flush? 3 high cards?

Kind of a broad question but any advice would be good.

nightowl89 · Pair Joined: 19 Apr 2008 Posts: 30

my advice would be to stick to the main starting hands, unless your opponents seem weak, ie you have 763 and everyone else has door cards over 10 it may be worth seeing 4th to try and hit something, ie flush draw/ straight draw. Its also totally dependant on who you are playing, if the table is tight, then loose is good and vice versa

DforDissent · Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 6:52 pm Post subject:

OP, define "shorthanded" okay? Cuz at HORSE and Stud tables, fullring is 8handed, but 6handed and even 5handed seems to play almost the same, i.e. you can "wait for a solid 3-card starter" since it's antes+bringin instead of the expensive blinds in Holdem/Omaha game... once you get to 4handed, if your opponents are still super-tight on 3rd you can open up a lot and steal the antes safely knowing they will only call (or better yet, raise!) with premium hands, so you can safely shut down in response and wait for the next hand to stealstealsteal... but if at 5handed there's already a lot of folks loosening up, too much in your opinion, you can stay tight in your hand selection since the pots will get big quickly and you want decent ammo going into a big battle.

3handed is short no matter what your opponents play like... and there your hand range depends 95% on what you think your opponent will do on 3rd and 4th (and to a lesser extent, on 6th/7th) and 4% on how many times in the last while you have gleefully stolen the antes (1% = what your hand strength actually is Wink

) I've played against some maniacs who open-complete their low bringin and by showdown I find out they had 2 unpaired broadway cards in the hole ... but they do this cuz they expect most people to presume they have 3 low to start and will fold on 5th if facing an apparent made-low hand (which many do, usually correctly I might add).

Playing the same way no matter your hand strength is probably more crucial in HU/3way, since you prefer to take down pots before the showdown rather than treading water splitting pot after pot. If you are lucky enough to be dealt a suited-3-wheel starter, if you are by nature a "keep the pot small" type of player don't suddenly limp-raise against a thinking player who always seems to complete his high in steal position, instead just call it and hope on 4th you both improve... but if you have been open-completing most of your low bringins, by all means do it again now just like the other times and hope this is the time he doesn't believe you and either calls you down light, or even raises on 3rd and 4th, raise him back and build the pot unless you double-brick by 6th... it's a dance, but shorthanded poker is always more of an art than a science, it's hit-perfect and triple-brick, it's rush and cooler, it's deception and honesty, ebb and flow.

spike420211 · Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 11:21 pm Post subject: Re: Short handed starting hands?

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