One of the golden tenets of moving to a higher stake is to not change your game but keep playing the game that got you there.

But what about deep-stack play?

For example, normally we don't flat hands like 65s IP because we don't hit enough to make it EV. How does having a bigger stack change this? If i'm up against a non-maniac fish whose 300bb-500bb deep with me in a cash game, how much many bb am I looking to make the pot with low sc for this to now be a profitable play? If I'm looking to just got 100bb in then why not do this in normal 100bb play? Since the answer is no we don't want 100bb pots with sc, we're looking to ship more than 100bb pots after the river, then I ask... what if he has a bigger flush?

How often do we hear on this forum to pot-control with low sc, but now that we're deep-stack, we're looking to get bloated pots to make playing low sc worth it? Does anyone see that contradiction?


My game is probably really suited to around 100bb play.. I just don't know what to do when I have 3-5 hundred bb in play with non-maniac fish. I know they overplay hands, so if they repop me with a draw, they'll liable to get me to fold really good hands and that scares me too, but if I only have 100-200bb I can accept the variance of their overplay vs their having the nuts.

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So when we find ourselves 300-500bb with fish, do you change your normal game and start limping a lot with them? What is your plan and strategy? I also feel like when were both limping, we're playing both playing bingo, but is the idea that we are skilled enough to extract more value and fold at the right time to change it from bingo to a game of skill?

You can start flatting hands like low suited connectors now and calling 3bs OOP. The reason for this is implied odds you have to call in comparison to the stack sizes.

Pretty much this ^

small - medium SC and small PPs have a ton of implied value since when you do flop a monster it's a lot harder to put someone on the hand.

Betting flop when you have AA and board comes 9TK is a lot more dangerous then when board comes 458...also take a look at turn if it is an A... it would be much easier to put someone on QJ then 67, stacks probably still go in on the 9TKA board depending on reads, image, etc but they would almost 100% go in on the 458A board regardless of reads, image, etc.

Right... we say IO odds is why low sc are worth it, but isn't this contradictory to the point that we try and pot control with lower suited connectors, i.e fold to large raises? Or is that just it. We hammer the pot and fold to the first raise cause they has higher flush?

Maybe read up on SPR before you continue this?

What's SPR going to do with this? Other than helping me figure if stacks are getting in or not throughout the streets and betting. My main fear is playing non-nuts with deep stacks. I guess I really need some examples of people successfully playing low suited connectors 300-500bb deep against non-maniac reg fish.

When deep stack play is mentioned, I always hear people recommend that it's time to start playing low to medium SC and single/double gappers, but why are we playing hands with terrible RIO super deep?

Are we suggesting that 100bb, we can't make money with SC/SG so we don't limp with them, but now that we have 200bb+ in play, we can win pots so big that it it makes up for the tens and tens of times we miss, and we're not worried about getting in stacks with a 6 high flush?

I just don't understand this, and everyone is so confident say they do. Just play SC deep... and in another post, don't over play SC!

One post: Play SC
Another post: It's easy to overplay SC

It just seems the deeper we are, it's even more easy to make blunders...

First thing I am going to tell you is if you aren't very skilled. Playing deep is going to ruin your WR and you will get taken for lots of dollars vs people who know how to play deep. That could be why its said its easy to overplay them. Its also easy to overplay AA deep.

Beyond flush over flush, how are low-mid suited connectors and one gappers providing you with terrible RIO?

When stacks are at 100bb. You are limited with your implied odds. Its capped. In relation to the pot and bet sizes you are going to be put in spots where it will be better to fold because you won't be making enough 100bb deep. If you have 76hh you flop a flush draw in a 3b pot and villian 3/4 flop and 3/4 turn. You will be getting 3-1 on that river call, with villian having about 30bb. So the direct call is bad because you wont river your flush 3-1, what villian has behind ALMOST makes up for it being 4-1 which is how often you will hit your flush but you may not get paid, making it questionable.

Change the stack sizes to 400bb and keep the bet sizes the same scenario changes greatly as your implied odds went up huge, you can extract more on the river making up for the times villain does not call making it very profitable.

The equity of suited connectors deep stacked isn't even about making a flush and putting your stack in the middle. You want to give you better coverage of the board and being able to pull sick stuff on all boards and get the leverage of your big stack to force people of capped ranges.

Let's say we're 100bb deep CO vs SB and we open to 3x and get 3bet to 12x from the SB. Now if we call and he has AA he probably isn't folding on any occasion except for some really nasty 9TJ boards or monotone flops. However, if we're 300bb deep he can't just 3bet and then bet/call it off on the flop or turn. By having a wide range here you can realistically represent a ton of hands while he often can't. Suited connectors (low) give you a chance to widen your range and do that with hands that have the most equity.

you are pretty much asking how to play poker with this post. Playing deepstack well takes a ton of work away from the tables and a lot of thought. A highly skilled deepstack player is going destroy less skilled opponents - and yes it is in fact very easy to make massive blunders

Almost everything.
Hands that make top pair hate SPRs of around 13 (and would rather have an SPR of <3, so that the decision to play for stacks is easy). Semi-bluffing hands like suited connectors work very well with high SPRs, since the deep stack gives you lots of room to manoeuvre and to put pressure on one pair hands.
Watch a video on SPR or pot commitment and it should become clear.

Playing deep stacked requires a lot of skill. Which is why I play tournaments.

I didnt read all the responses, but from a beginners pov- You dojnt necessarily want to bloat it, but take advantage of your hand reading skill to recognize when the opp has a good hand below yours. Then you can either bomb away or slowplay based on opps tendencies?

When you're deep you can have a wiiiiiiide 3b range IP and call lots of 4bets, it's pretty fun.

^^^This. One thing to add is that even if you have 500bb in your stack, it doesn't matter when everyone else only has 100bb. You're still playing a 100bb game. It is pretty rare that a 100bb buy in table can support more than 2 deep stacks at the beginner levels in a live game.

Older players remember that 15 years ago, no-limit cash games basically didn't exist. While Moneymaker played a role, the main reason was that the buy in back then wasn't capped. Any game that started up was by nature deep. People would buy in and get busted out quickly, thus killing the game. When Brunson wrote in Super System that people would just let him take pots, it was not much more than just betting enough that nobody would call without the nuts.

The point is that you shouldn't have to worry about playing deep all that often. Unless you're playing with less than 5% of your bankroll, you should get up from that game anyway.

I agree with the wise people who said I'm basically asking how to play poker, and deep stack is it's own game and requires lots of hard work to figure out. There's no easy answer.

In live, at the right time and poker room, deep stack vs deepstack is very common, so someone should learn it if they want to increase their hourly. I mean what are you going to do, just try and avoid the other deepstackers and play your normal poker, unless you have the nuts?


As to strategy
I def think one needs to change their PF ranges and tendencies and certain plays can become profitable, such as flatting raises IP with small SC! You can also try and 3! bluff these hands, but there's two different avenues I rarely drive on with 100bb.

I think it takes so much more skill to be long term success at deepstack play in cash... Also you need to be properly rolled.

is trolling ok in beginners thread?

I don't think this is a troll.

^^ Probably not, but this thread is going to induce trolling.

Everything. Now you need to go and study it properly. Professional No Limit Holdem by Miller et al, if you need a resource.

Yeah, not a troll. This is the beginner's forum and the person is asking about deep stacked play.

My advice, essentially, is to learn other aspects of the game first. Maybe I'm wrong and they should learn deep stacked play early, I'm open to that argument.

My note about how I play tournaments is true. I don't have the skills to play deep stacked, so I don't.

I'm sorry then. I understood this the other way which was that u play tournaments cause they are deep stacked and therefore thought it was a troll. My bad.

Deep stack is a leak of mine. I try too hard to be a rockstar. Loose aggro works but no need to barrel more than 2 streets max on a bluff.

I've played a good amount of 100bb poker in the past decade. Even though many of my decisions are far from solved (in my mind), I still feel comfortable sitting at this depth vs pretty much anyone. Around 150bb effective my adjustments start becoming suspect, and at 300bb+ I just try to not stack myself.

As I get deeper, I widen my ranges in some spots and tighten in others, and aim to make all of my ranges more dynamic when I can. Suited aces become much stronger before the flop, and there are implied odds to play low suited connectors in position. At the lowest stakes, bet sizing will increase proportionally, people say "**** it" and toss in chips much more frequently pre-flop and on the river, and some people get insanely loose and aggressive.

Because of the infrequency of getting deep, and the importance of winning when you do, I take plays out of the playbook and am more conservative overall, and it shows a profit at the lowest stakes because people blowing up is a regular occurrence, but I'm pretty sure I'm missing out on some key ideas and spots. An example is flatting Q4 BB vs CO, and check-raising a J 7 5 flop some % of the time. Deeper stacked I'm probably not doing this.

Overall, at least at $1/2, you can kind of just pay attention and adjust to beat glaring mistakes from your opponents, but deeper play at higher stakes won't be as easy to figure out, and I want to be prepared for this when the time comes to play. What are some core concepts of deeper play against stronger opponents?