Dealing with short-stackers is a big issue for a lot of cash game players these days. Every day it seems like there are more of them at the grinder level games from $50 to $400 NL, and I don't see this changing any time soon. The short stack strategy is simple to play, and while it might not be that challenging or interesting, it does offer a simple way to make a small hourly income.

I see four ways of dealing with the short stacker problem if you are a no-limit grinder and they are causing problems in your game.

1. Learn to handle the short stackers and avoid them when you can. Getting some table selection software might help you find tables with less short stacks, but you'll still see them at your tables and you can't run away from them forever. The good news is that learning to handle them isn't that tough. Get some tracking software if you aren't already using it (I use Holdem Manager and highly recommend it) and make sure to put the 3bet stat in your heads up display.

Because the short stack simplifies everything, learning when to call the all-in raises from short stacks can be done with a simple spreadsheet and a copy of Poker Stove. Make yourself a chart to determine when to call the short stacks.

2. Find a new game. You learned how to play NLHE, and you know so much more about poker now than you did when you started, so the next game you learn should be easier. Between bots, and grinders, and so much information available about the games, no-limit cash can be a pretty tough game these days anyway. Win rates for pot limit Omaha games are still very high for solid players, and short stackers are much easier to handle in those games, and mixed games may be the wave of the future, so learning a few of those games might be very profitable as well.

Mixed games are also excellent, and picking a new game can be a fun diversion even if it doesn't make you rich. Get yourself a few books or pay a coach for a few hours of lessons and you will find that beating alternate games might be a lot easier than fighting with the short stacks at the no-limit Holdem tables.

3. Join the masses that are demanding higher minimum buy-ins on the major sites. You'll have to back up your requests on forums and in emails to the site by taking your rake dollars elsewhere if you want the sites to listen up and make a change. Many sites offer deep stack games or games with higher minimum buy-ins, though there aren't enough of them running yet for a full time grinder to survive, and patronizing these games will help increase their popularity.

Whatever you do to push the sites to raise the minimum buy-ins, make sure you aren't requesting things you don't really want. Remember that many short stack players are very weak players that you want to play with, and requiring a 75 big blind minimum buy-in will make the games significantly tougher. If the minimums were raised to 30 or 35 big blinds the standard short stackers would no longer be able to play their robotic style, while players who just want to take a shot at the game will still be able to buy-in a little short and take a shot.

Lobby for, and play in, games that don't allow short stacks - Just raising the minimum buy-in to 30 or 35 big blinds will allow people to play a variety of stack sizes and will effectively stifle the standard 20 big blind short-stackers.

4. If you can't beat em, join em. If you really believe that short stackers are unbeatable and they are crushing the games (mostly not true, though many of them post a slow and steady win rate) then you may just want to join them and become a short stacker yourself. The strategy is simple and easy to learn, and making a one or two big blinds per hundred hands isn't tough to do. The downside - it's boring and the grind wears most people down quickly and it won't help you improve your skill level in any other games or teach you anything about the game.

As word gets around to more areas where a small income in U.S. dollars can make a big difference in people's lives, and more programmers put together short stack bots, short-stackers will only increase in number. I know it can be frustrating, but we probably won't be able to get rid of them or ever get away from them completely, so learn to deal with them and get over it. They are part of the game now. At the rate that things change in online poker the players will find something else to complain about and the problems will be completely different.

Join Fox at the tables at pokerprosnetwork.net/chriswallace.html

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