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When you are new and just beginning to play poker online, you’re likely to find yourself in a situation that will become all too familiar before you learn to work around it: your chip stack is shrinking and it feels like there’s no way you’re going to make it to the next level in a no limit tournament. The problem that many new poker players have at this point is that the best advice for this situation is counter-intuitive: be aggressive and don’t worry about protecting your stack. Players who focus their energies on protecting their stack instead of maximizing the chips they have end up hitting the rails far too quickly.

This is something that’s been covered in a lot of poker books, but it’s still a major problem for many players, including pros at the WSOP and the like. You find yourself in a position where you’re fighting for your very survival at the table and every instinct you have tells you to wait for pocket rockets or KK, but without stealing pots, you’re just going to get pecked to death by blinds and players who can sense your weakness. Reality says that the best strategy, and some say the only real strategy, is to go all in when you feel you have a shot at it. At poker tournaments, you see far too many short-stacked people who are trying to make a raise that’s three or four times the size of the big blind, but then they get called out by someone who has the chips to play. If you’re not willing to commit, you don’t tell the other players you’re serious about the cards in front of you and they will savage you.

Most, if not all of the action when you have a short stack is going to take place on the preflop and flop betting rounds, and you’re going to want to make sure that you get in while the getting is good. You should avoid hands like suited connectors and small pocket pairs as these hands are for players who can lose a few chips, and impede odds are there to compensate for what happens when you miss the flop. You’re best off entering hands with big suited cards and don’t be afraid to play an A9 or A8 because that Ace can save your bacon when it gets down to it.

The short version is this: use your chips, use the cards you’re given, and get your position back!