At a game in which we expect to have an edge, the buy in is $1000. The game will run for some short time (say 100 hands) and then never again - so getting re-invited is not an issue. The host asks us our opinion on what the blinds should be. What is your call and why?

How many players?

Maybe 8 players.

smallest blinds ever, deep stack play is best bro

At 8 players that would be pretty boring haha.

In all seriousness OP the stack depth can actually affect your winrate as some people can play well at 100bb and shallower stacks, but are inexperienced at 150+bb and may make more mistakes.

Not only that if you make stacks really shallow then cards play more of a factor.

If your edge is the same at any stack depth, say you're always winning at 4bb/100 for whatever stack depth, then I would think in theory that given the small number of hands that are going to be played, you're going to want the blinds relatively large.

Keep in mind though at 100 hands the cards are going to have an overwhelming influence on how much you win/lose.

So our BB/100 will go up as the blinds get smaller, but the value of those blinds will also go down. We might more than double our BB/100 if we half the blinds. Presumably we hit diminishing returns at some point. Obviously if we are playing 0.50/1.00 1000BB deep, we don't double our BB/100 by switching to 0.25/0.50 and playing 2000 BB deep. So the question is, where is the sweet spot?

like 200bb deep

^ So as a strong player, our winrate in BB/100 when playing 200BB deep will be more than double our BB/100 winrate playing 100BB deep?

I find that surprising but obviously I'm asking the question because I don't know myself.

With 200BB stacks we win twice as much when we stack off with a better hand - is it also because the extra depth gives us more room to manouvre - we can blow villains off more pots without showdown that otherwise villain would win?

Since I'm better at 50bb or 100bb deep, I'd go for one of those. (I tend to spew too much if eff stacks are much deeper).

how about 2/5 with an optional button straddle?

I don't think you can assume your winrate will directly correlate to how deep you are, even if you know you have an edge. Your winrate will be affected more by how your opponents are bad (i.e. where your edge comes into play).


Imho with the 100 hand restriction it's likely you'll favor larger blinds because you have a limited number of hands to try and move as much money into your stack as possible so even with a potentially lower bb/100 you'd have more money coming in.

Guessing 50-75 will be the sweet spot at 100 hands.

It depends a lot on on how your opponents play.
vs random fish, I'd probably choose 50bb stacks, hit my top pair and stack them. seems most profitable to me.

It won't be double.

Anyways, the points made regarding total money won rather than win-rate are good. I'd still assume something like 200bb deep since your edge is much larger and you'll be able to increase your vpip.

With the low blinds (10bb start stack) the edge you'll have even vs. complete whales won't be very high, but you might have a small win rate but with big blinds. So could be close.

Conclusion: not sure, but still thinking 200 deep.

This is actually a pretty good suggestion and it also brings up not only the question of blind size but also blind structure.

With 8 people and 100 hands you're going to have the blinds 12.5 times so for a typical structure we're looking at paying 12.5 bb + 6.25bb = 18.75 bb for the session in blinds.

If we change the structure to say .33/1, 1/1, etc that changes things.

Also your position on players in the game will affect your winrate. Oh the variables!

2/4 w 1 chip ante

25/50 the bigger the game the bigger the edge. 50/100 is so short though that there is no room to play/fold equity.

Nice idea but straddles aren't an option this time around

They aren't total fish but they aren't amazing either.

My knee-jerk reaction was 5/10 since 99% of the poker I've played is 100bb deep and that's what I'm more comfortable with, but after thinking about it some more that's probably incorrect.

It should be a given that as a blinds increase your BB/100 decreases since you're more shallow and there's less room to outplay your opponent. However, in order to make the same $ amount at smaller blinds, your winrate (in BB/100) has to at least double if the blind sizes get halved.

From back when I played on Stars and shortstacking was allowed, and you could look up player's winrates on sites like PokerTableRatings.com, it showed the best shortstackers making around 1BB/100. Meanwhile, the best deep stackers made around 2.5 BB/100 (mid-high stakes, 6max) over large samples. So if you do some simple math, you could tell that in order for a deepstacker (100bb) to perform better than a shortstacker (20bb) at higher stakes (but not level of play) the deepstacker needs a winrate of at least 5 BB/100 which is pretty unrealistic for the online mid/high level. I have no idea how a supershort (10bb) shortstacker would do but there does come a point where you're so shallow there's not really much of way to extract any money at all when people are committed after just one preflop raise.

So my amended answer is 25/50 (20bb). At the lowest micros where winrates of 5BB/100+ are realistically achievable, I think you could say 100bb would be better, but I'm still hard pressed to believe 200bb would be better than that.

There is a live game dynamic where win-rate is probably more closely related to stack size than blinds.

I.e. It is quite possible win-rate doubles when blinds halve, because most fish still play the same way for $30 pre-flop.

So the question probably has different answers in theory/GTO, and in practice.

^I'm thinking more about online though than live so it's more about theory. (my reason for asking the question isn't clear from the hypothetical in the OP - I will post my actual reason in a few days).

I've realized the above post sounds douchey (I haven't realized that yet about my other 3389 posts, just that one), so I'll tell you my reason for posting this poll now and not wait a few days:

Rephrase the question as:

When we expect to have an edge in tournaments, we are rolled for a buy-in of $X, we have limited screen space - it's tournaments so getting re-invited is not an issue. We can choose whether to play a turbo or reg speed. What is your call and why?

I wanted to ask this phrased as a "cash" question, because the conventional wisdom in tournaments is just the opposite of tournaments.

Based on this thread, we should be able to gain chips the fastest in level 1 of an MTTSNG (1500 chips blinds of 10/20 with a 3 ante), yet the conventional wisdom is to play tight and wait around until the more important levels start.

In normal tournaments many players late reg and don't bother with the time when they would be playing for their $X buy-in with it divided into 50BBs or 100BBs - they come in later on when the buy-in represents only 20BBs

Most good players advise grinding turbo MTTSNGs rather than reg speeds - they phrase it in terms of exercising their ROI more often - but to my mind their ROI only comes from playing hands, and they are not really playing many more hands, so why is it better to divide the buy-in into 12BBs rather than about 20BBs for most of the tournament?

Not sure if that changes anyone's opinion, or if maybe people think the parallel isn't valid for some reason.

The bolderd part isn't true. ROI for tournament players doesn't have as much to do with the number of hands they play and more to do with how good you are at placing high in the money.

Don't get me wrong part of being able to place high is to play play well and make good chip EV decisions, but actually making money in a tournament involves making decisions outside of a per hand basis because chips don't translate directly to money as they do in cash.

^ They still gain the dollar equity playing (or folding) hands though.

Voted 5/10 but 2/4 deep is close too.
Anything higher is too gambly for my taste.If we are about realizing a supposed edge,we dont want to get into a possible close equity situation,and also we would like to see as much flops as we possibly can so we can make more better decisions than our opponents.

Even if deeper means a bigger edge, it's not necessarily correct to choose that in this example. E.g. you wouldn't choose blinds of 1c-2c.

Assuming you have an edge; the bigger the blinds, the bigger the $ win rate. So it's a case of determining your BB/100 win rate at 200BB stacks, 100BB stacks, 20BB stacks etc.

A lot depends where your edge comes vs these players. As an extreme example, lets say the whole table will only play pre-flop if they have AA or KK, in this case, the higher the blinds the better.

For this specific question, I'd guess the correct answer is closer to 50BBs than 100BBs. I think over 100BBs isn't maximizing your $ win rate in a finite game.


Interesting comparison wrt tournament play. Not sure if the concept is perfectly applicable though. If the question is whether you should late reg or not, I think it's clearly more +EV to reg on time. If the question is something like: you have limited screen space, should you reg tourney B on time, or late reg tourney A and then late reg B if you can. The second option will possibly mean you get in two tournaments which should mean a higher net profit, but the EV of tournament B will suffer you would think (earlier reg => higher ROI in that tournament).


Would it not be more correct to use this example:

Would you rather:
- one session of 50 hands with $1000 stack at $5-$10 blinds, followed by 50 hands at $10-$20 blinds

or

- two sessions of 50 hands each with $2000 stacks at $20-$40 blinds

In this example, I choose option 2 because you have an edge playing for more money.