What is Short Stacking?
Short stacking or “buying short”, as it applies to poker, is buying for significantly less than the table maximum at a no-limit or pot-limit game. This gives the short stack a chance to go all-in against a preflop raiser and use fold equity to increase his profit on the hand, and also allows the short stacker to play near perfect poker.
Poker is much easier to quantify when the stacks are shorter, which is why there are perfect solutions to things like playing a stack of ten big blinds or less in a tournament. At sites like Push Fold Charts or Holdem Resources, you can find charts tell you exactly which hands to play with a short stack in a tournament, but deeper stacks are much tougher to solve. The short stacker in a cash game can play nearly perfect poker, while the big stacks have to be afraid of each other and can not call the all-in raises from the short stacker with a weak hand for fear that another big stack may go all-in over the top and they would be forced to fold after committing 20 big blinds.
Using simple game theory equations, we can find the perfect strategy for a short stack player. The very simplest systems do not adjust to opponents in any way, they are just a set of rules that can be expressed on one page. Our system is a good example of this. These systems can only beat games up to a certain level, and above $50NL, the players are strong enough on most sites that the short stacker will need to start making some adjustments to his opponents to show a consistent profit. These adjustments are covered by more advanced systems like ShortSystem or ShortStackRevolution.
The systems available only cover Texas holdem, though a system for pot-limit Omaha is certainly possible and we imagine someone is already working on it.