Last night I was playing at a very passive preflop table. I hit some great hands vs good hands and played pretty well and after a few hours had 700bb. The next highest stack was between 200-300 BB the whole night.
So if I'm at a table where basically no one ever open raises and I'm really deep, should I open a lot more hands? Seems like yes, but maybe that's how you give up a big stack real quick??
Your effective depth is only as big as your opponents stack. If you have 1000bb and he has 100, then the most you can win or lose on a hand is 100. In that sense, you are not "big stacked". So you wouldn't play differently at 700bb here than you would at 200-300bb.
There are lots of changes to be made at larger stack sizes. One is that you can see more flops with speculative hands, because you may be able to win more when you hit a big hand. There are many posts on this, i.e. how many BB effective do you need to play small pairs, suited connectors, etc.
Some other hands become harder to play, because you won't be able to get a large percentage of your effective stack in preflop or on the flop, so some hands like AK that miss the flop can become difficult. Some hands that are a raise at 50BB stacks or 100bb stacks might just become a call at 500bb because the SPR on the flop will be bad.
In classic irony, it actually appears as though just the opposite may be the case if there are 3-4 250+ bb stacks with position on you as their ability to make a large impact on your stack and potentially threatening your ability to make big bluffs later on, getting tighter looks like(at first glance) the road better travelled. I know for a fact it becomes more difficult for me to play in that situation for sure. But then, I am assuming that they are both deep and good. But I can not say with confidence that this isn't my skill level writing this response. I would bet on it actually. As always, it appears that " it depends" has reared its head once again.
IMO which is somewhat unorthodox, some hands go up in value when deep, like suited aces, while some hands go down greatly in value, like small pairs.
Playing small pairs when deep stacked is a good way to get yourself coolered. If your opponent isn't a whale, and you flop bottom set on a dry board and play a 600 BB pot, what exactly are you hoping to beat?
Conversely, suited aces are nice for coolering people who make any other flush, especially king high flushes.
The composition of your opening range changes with your stack depth. The frequency with which you open does fluctuate with stack size but I would imagine not as dramatically as it fluctuates with position and as fast as the composition of your range.
