Ben ‘bencb’ Rolle is the founder and head coach at Raise Your Edge and the winner of the 2025 WSOP Online Main Event that netted him $3.9 million.
I am delighted to be working with PokerOrg to provide you with actionable, no-nonsense strategic advice that I teach to my students at Raise Your Edge and that also helped me win the WSOP 2025 Online Main Event.
Over the next couple of strategy articles, I will be talking about playing a short stack, specifically sub-10bb.
We’ll cover:
- Why ICM is flawed for short stacks
- Why ICM overrates short stacks
- The other factors you need to consider in your strategy
Most players think the only option when sub-10bb is shove or fold.
Yes, you mostly want to shove, but you can still have a min-raise/fold strategy with 7bb. Even with 12bb you can have a 3-bet fold strategy. If you 3-bet to 4.5bb, you’re still not committed due to ICM.
When in doubt, min-raise!
Let’s look at a 10bb example here, where we are on the stone money bubble. It’s folded to us in the HJ with A8o and 10bb. Stacks behind range from 15-25bb.
If we fold, we’re going to very easily get into the money.
So, this is a clear fold here, right? Not quite. It’s actually not a bad spot to min-raise. In ICM, the BBs defending range includes 65o, 98o, T9o. Do you think with 15bb on the stone money bubble he’s continuing with these hands?
I don’t think so.
If he has 40bb, it looks different, but at this stack depth, they’re not going to take the risk. Also, he’s supposed to shove almost every single ace in this spot. It’s just not happening!
What about the 20bb SB?
They are supposed to have a very aggressive strategy. But, how often on the stone money bubble with 20bb would you see the SB jamming over the min-raise from a 10bb stack with K3-K7s, Q9s, 54s,65s,76s,87s? Any suited ace? A4-A5o?
It’s the same story for the 25bb button.
Do you think he’s going to shove his 25bb against a very tight range (10bb HJ) with J9s, K9s, and every single suited ace?
Nope. Nada. Never.
And finally, the cut-off, who should be the tightest here with one of the shorter stacks and players behind. He’s even supposed to flat hands like 54s, 65s and 76s. In reality? He is probably folding 92% of hands.
The takeaway? The button and blinds are going to be calling and 3-betting way less than they are supposed to.
Min-raising off a short stack can be super powerful, as the players behind have to be very aggressive, which they’re just not going to be due to the emotional pressure of the money bubble.
Players try to induce too much
So, let’s now look at our raise-first-in (RFI) strategy here as the 10bb HJ.
We want to be min-raising KK here. But you can see we want to avoid min-raising hands that need lots of protection (AKo, AQo, 88-JJ).
So even though the solver wants some of the players behind us to 3-bet all the aces, J9s, K8s, etc., it still does not want us to induce with AK or QQ.
This is where I see the mistake of players trying to induce far too much. If we make the strategies of the players behind more realistic and less aggressive, these hands become even more clear of a jam.
My personal exploit here would be to jam JJ-QQ and min-raise A8o and fold to any aggression. I think adding A8-A9o type hands is pretty good.
This is very dependent on how aggressive your opponents are supposed to be.
That’s it for part 1 of this short stack series. I will be back for part 2 in this short-stack supremacy series next week, where we will be unpicking why ICM overrates your short stack and what this means for your strategy.
Until then, you can practice all these scenarios in our poker trainer, The Champions Tier. Just 10 minutes a day is all you need to really surpass the competition, who just don’t know this stuff.
Ben ‘bencb’ Rolle is the founder and head coach at Raise Your Edge.
Raise Your Edge is a poker training school that specializes in teaching an exploitative, winning approach in both tournaments and cash games. Their flagship membership, ‘The Champions Tier,’ is not just another poker course, it’s an all-in-one solution to becoming a long-term winning player.
Join The Champions Tier today.
