E-WSOP

About Being Short Stacked

Hello,
Just like many others, I have also enjoyed your site. Thanks for all the efforts you’ve exerted just to put up and maintain this site.

Well, I actually drop by because I wanted to ask something. I’ve been playing no limit home tournaments for some time now and in almost all my games I find it hard to deal with stuff about being short stacked.

Ever since, I believe that when you are short stacked and had to go all in you’ll just win the amount of chips you had left, times the number of opponents in the pot. However, in televised tournaments, things were different.

For an instance, the blinds are $500 / $1000 and you are playing three handed. Then let’s say you just lost a hand for most of your chips and are down to $300 and are now the small blind. Eventually, the dealer calls $1000 and you are all in for $300. Later on the big blind calls $1000. My question now is, are you now limited to winning only $900 for your $300 plus the $300 coming from every dealer and the big blind or as much as $2300 for your $300 plus the $1000 from every preflop bettors? Or else, to $1600 for your $300, the $1000 from the big blind and $300 from the dealer?

Any idea? Thank you.
Mark

Mark,

If you are all in for 300, the most you can win off each opponent is 300. In your example you can win 900 total. I know why television tournaments are confusing you. In most pro tournaments, at some point ante’s are introduced to go along with the blinds. Television tournaments are heavily edited so you do not see the antes put in the pot. Therefore, the person that had 300 left in a tournament with antes may actually had to ante up 50 before the hand. If there are 9 players at the table, there is 450 in the pot in addition to the blinds. If that is the case, you player would win the 900 and the 450 in antes.