Short stack sonar

Most often the people flat calling are drawing. At big enough poker tables a late caller gets great odds for what was at the outset a pot bet. If we are the ones betting and we have a hand to protect then we doesn’t very much like that.

Many people see the solution to this as being a check raise. With the exception of a few situations we don’t promote much check raising. To understand this you have to first understand that one of the reasons you bet is to buy information. With a check raise there is the risk that nobody bets, in that case the information is overpriced.

Submarines use sonar to identify and sink their opponents. We want to be like them. Sonar works by sending out a small ‘ping,’ upon its reflection and return it has a new vector. One of the situations in poker games which we think merits a sonar type bet is the kind where you know you get to bet more if you want to. It’s like string betting but with a payoff.

Imagine there is a short stack at your table, really, really short. You bet half his stack, or when we are playing on the Prima poker network, his stack minus a penny (they let you re-raise on any raise). The short stack having called preflop is pot committed, he either knows that raising gives him a chance to shorten his list of enemies or he feels that it is just what he may as well do. Whatever the underlying reasoning is he almost always does it.

Ideally the short stack is on the button and we got to see if everyone else just flat called this tiny bet. The interpretation being that they want as cheap a draw as possible. Then when the short stack raises we get to re-raise all in or max, depending on pot or no limit. If the short stack was in the middle or right after us we still get to see how people react to the raise, they may in turn re-raise, it could be max or min, usually nothing too middle of the road. This lets us know if we only thought we had the best hand or if we are going to get paid off when we have the nuts.

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