You've made it far: short stacks relative to the blinds, antes eating your stack and every elimination bumping the money. Here the game gets simpler and highly technical at the same time.
Push/fold
With fewer than ~15 blinds your preflop decision is usually binary: shove your whole stack or fold. Raising 'normal' makes no sense because you get committed anyway. Which hands to shove depends on your stack and your position: the shorter you are, the wider you shove from late position.
| Blinds | Strategy |
|---|---|
| < 10 bb | Pure push/fold. Shove wide from the button and the blinds if you get stolen from. |
| 10–20 bb | Mix it up: raise-fold, 3-bet shove over steals, an occasional open-shove. |
| 20–30 bb | More normal play, but carefully: you can still get committed fast. |
Re-steal
The re-steal is stealing back from the thief: when a stack that opens a lot raises from late position, you shove (or 3-bet) from the blind with a wider range than usual, exploiting that they open loose and can't call it all off.
⚠️ Error común: Be careful shoving against stacks that cover you right at pay jumps (ICM): there you need much better hands.
💡 Clave: Short stack = disciplined push/fold by position and blinds. Take advantage of the re-steal against those who steal a lot, but respect ICM at the pay jumps.