There’s a cartoon you might have seen: Two vultures are sitting on a tree in a desert and one says to the other, “Patience my ass, I’m gonna kill something.” If your attitude toward no limit Texas hold’em is “patience, my ass,” man, do I have a game for you. It’s called shorthanded no limit Texas hold’em, and not only does it let you play a ton of hands and see a ton of flops, you’re actually playing incorrectly – disastrously incorrectly, in fact – if you don’t. So if you’re an action junkie like I am, then hop aboard the shorthanded hold’em express as we investigate a variant of poker where patience, God bless it, is the kiss of death.

First, what do we mean by playing shorthanded? Generally speaking, a shorthanded game is one with anywhere from two to six players. We can further parse shorthanded play into cash games and tournaments. Some cash games, especially online, are shorthanded by design. Others become shorthanded as players come and go. On the tournament side, shorthanded play is generally limited to the end stages of a sitngo (sit and go tournament) or the final tables of large field tourneys. For now we’ll focus on cash game play, rather than the special circumstances of tournaments, where the antes and blinds are often so high as to take the “play” out of the shorthanded game.

To play shorthanded hold’em successfully, you need to make three key strategic adjustments.

1. PAY MORE ATTENTION.

In a fullhanded ring game, you can sometimes afford to let your mind drift, especially if it’s the sort of game where the only thing you really need to do right is wait for big cards and then bet the bejeezus out of them. Shorthanded success comes not from waiting for big tickets but from deciphering your foes’ approaches to the game and making appropriate adjustments. So play shorthanded with riveted focus or just don’t play at all.

2. DETECT PATTERNS.

In a full ring game, the sheer number of players involved makes it difficult to detect meaningful patterns of play – and especially difficult to find situations where those patterns can be exploited. In shorthanded play, though, with everyone taking such swiftly repeating turns on the big blind, small blind, button, etc., players who fall into predictable patterns – routinely failing to defend their blinds, for example, or raising on the button every time – will quickly become, well, prey.

3. CRANK YOUR AGGRESSIVENESS WAY UP.

This is the most important adjustment to make shorthanded. As we’ll see in a moment, most of the time no one has much of a hand in a shorthanded game. For this reason, you want to create situations where you can win pots with or without a hand. That’s called taking control, and sheer brute aggressiveness is the straw that stirs this particular drink. As you know, conventional fullhanded poker wisdom calls for a selective-aggressive approach to the game. Well, shorthanded is just like that – but without the selective part!

But shorthanded play isn’t just about altering your strategic approach to the game. You also need to alter your mindset, because shorthanded hold’em is about as much like fullhanded hold’em as elephants are like beer. Here are the three key mental adjustments you need to make.

1. GET READY FOR THE RIDE.

Just considering how much more frequently you’ll be taking the blinds shorthanded – not to mention the ones you’ll be attacking! – you know you’re going to be involved in a lot more pots, which means that your stack will rise and fall more steeply and swiftly than it would in a tame and timid full ring game. Shorthanded play is a roller coaster – sometimes an extreme one. In the name of mental toughness, you have to strap yourself in for the ride. In other words, be prepared or be not there.

2. ACKNOWLEDGE SUPERIOR PLAY.

In a full ring game, weaker players can evade and avoid stronger ones just by folding a lot and waiting for big tickets or good trap situations. Shorthanded, there’s no place to hide. If you’re in a game where the other players are running all over you, you just need to run away. There’s no shame in this. The only shame comes from staying in a game you know you can’t beat until your money’s all gone and they make you go away.

3. PLAY THE PLAYERS.

No limit hold’em has been called “a game of people played with cards.” Shorthanded is like that, only more so. There are countless times when the question isn’t whether you have a hand, but whether your foe does, and whether he can be driven off the pot if he does not. We all know that poker is based on what beats what, but in shorthanded hold’em, it’s much more a case of who beats whom.

So what sort of starting hands should you be looking for in shorthanded play? I’m tempted to say “any two will do,” because often the will to bet is all that matters. While it’s not quite as simple as that, the strength of starting cards definitely descends as the number of players goes down.

Here’s why.

On average, one starting hold’em hand out of five will contain either an ace or a pair. This means that in a full ring game, an average of two players will have “real” hands, and if you aren’t one of them, you can comfortably assume you’re beaten and fold. In a shorthanded setting, though, the odds are good (and the shorter the game the better the odds) that “nobody’s got nothing.” With this in mind, you can look favorably on hands like K-Q, J-T suited, and bad aces. In a context where nobody’s got nothing, these hands – plus pairs and good aces, of course – become monsters.

Likewise, when you start looking at flops, you’re going to be looking for weaker hits than you would in a fullhanded game. Hitting the flop shorthanded means hitting top pair/no kicker, middle pair/good kicker, or even a naked bottom pair. You’d hesitate to go to war with these holdings in a ten-way game, but shorthanded they’re well worth backing with your bucks. Conversely, your draws go down in value shorthanded because there are fewer players to pay you off when you hit.

In terms of image and playing style, how you approach the shorthanded game is up to you. As in any poker game, the image that’s most in harmony with your true nature is the one you’ll be able to sell most effectively. That said, shorthanded games are supercharged games, and there’s really no place in them for weak, cautious, timid play, either for image or for real. Your goal should always be to control the action with raises and reraises. Here’s a good way to measure your chances of success in a shorthanded game: If you find that you’re generally the one putting in the last bet, you’re probably in good shape. Conversely, the more you find yourself calling along, the more at risk you’re likely to be.

Finally there’s this: Most people don’t know how to play shorthanded hold’em. They bring their fullhanded wait and see mentality to shorthanded play – where it really just doesn’t work very well. So skill yourself up in this variant of poker, adopt its core philosophy – not wait and see but swoop and pummel – and you can be the boss of the small table: a very profitable role to play. Because at the end of the day, shorthanded play is a different breed of cat. Patience is punished, not rewarded. Betting strength and hand strength don’t correlate. And the single most effective playing style is attentive bully. Master that style, and you’ll find that shorthanded hold’em can mean significant long green for you.

John Vorhaus is the author of the KILLER POKER series and the lauded new novel, THE CALIFORNIA ROLL. Visit him online at johnvorhaus.com.