Avoiding being pot-committed
In Part 1 of this series we described being pot-committed as when you are in a situation where you might not have a very strong hand but are forced to call based on the pot odds. These situations are fairly easy to spot and are mostly unavoidable, such as when you’ve lost most of your stack in a big pot and are in the big blind the next hand. But one of the keys to playing successful poker is thinking ahead and not putting yourself in awkward situations unnecessarily, such as pot-committing yourself when you could have avoided it. This is particularly important in Sit & Go’s where the stacks are always short and you can make the money a good percentage of the time purely by avoiding trouble.
In most situations the idea of avoiding pot-commitment relates only to high-blind play, as it’s practically inevitable when you have a short stack. If you only have ten big blinds and make a standard raise to three big blinds you will usually have to call a reraise as you’ll be getting such good pot odds to call. That’s why shoving is preferable as you may force some hands to fold or avoid a tricky decision if you have a hand like a bad Ace. Similarly if you get called the pot will now be so big that you can only really go all-in or check on the flop, again putting yourself in a bad spot that could see you bubbling the money.
For this reason you should only be making smaller raises when you have a bigger stack, and raising less. So with 15 big blinds you can raise to 2.5BBs and easily fold to shoves if you have a weak hand, and can continuation-bet and fold if you are called and miss the flop. Similarly, you are less pot-committed to reraises with this bet size – now if someone shoves for ten big blinds you can fold your bad Ace.
Bigger stacks
When you do have a big enough stack to make small raises, you should also consider the other stack sizes behind you, as well as how to play your hands in response to them. For example, when all players behind you have ten big blinds or less you are better off just shoving or folding yourself, but if there is one stack of 25 big blinds and some short stacks you should make a small raise. Similarly, if the short stacks are very low they are easy to play against, as you will automatically be pot-committed, but try to avoid putting yourself in tough situations. So, if you have 7-7 on the button against two 15BB stacks and aren’t comfortable raise/calling then you might be better off shoving yourself first.