Is there any one that has made good money
Or is it just a hit and run ? Sorry if it has been ask before.

Just buying in for $40 and that is it

4-8 is unbeatable due to the rake. If the drop is $6/hand and we average 30 hands/hr. The drop will collect all the money at the table before a shift is over. You're better off short stacking NL or playing 6/12+ if you can afford it. If you're going to play low limits, treat it as a hobby without expectations of winning money.

Short stacking is never a good idea in a limit game.

Apart from that, as dadjoey stated, 4/8 is nearly unbeatable due to the take. It could be slightly profitable during promo hours.

So if you can only afford 4/8, make sure to check the casino's online calendar and only play during the juiciest promos.

When I play low stakes limit hold'em, I lose a small pot, lose a small pot, lose a small pot, and then win a large pot. On good days, the large pots won outweigh the small pots lost.

By short-stacking, you are limiting the size of the large pots you win. You are only buying in with 5 big bets. If you raise preflop, and bet each street, you have put in $28 ($8+$4+$8+$8), leaving you only $12, or one and a half big bets. If you ever have the nuts on the turn and want to 3 bet, you wouldn't have enough for a full river bet ($8+$4+24+...).

Short stacking low stakes limit games are not a great idea. Short stacking works better in NL, where you can go all-in.

Short-stacking in limit is a good way to lose your money.

If you have an edge in the game, you will lose your money most of the time and sometimes wind up with a stack big enough to play.

Short-stacking works in no-limit because of the fold equity that comes with shoving. The fold equity that comes with fixed-limit raises is much less helpful to the short stack.

4-8 is really hard to beat because of the rake. That makes it an even worse environment to short-stack than bigger games.

Why do you want to short stack? Maybe we can help you fix the reasoning. i.e. are you afraid of playing post flop and making bad decisions and are trying to get all in as fast as possible?

Yeah, there's really no reason to not put a large chunk of ammo on a fixed limit table. Online that's probably 20 bets. Live that's probably 40 (easier to reload online). Short stacking in big bet games is a viable option because you can shove and generate a lot of folds, all while not risking all that much money. Plus, it's easier to see all 5 cards when you have a short stack relative to your opponents.

I agree with short stacking LHE being a bad idea. But the reason it can work in NL isn't because of fold equity. I used to short stack loose NL games, and I was certainly disappointed anytime I got a fold. I was looking for calls and to double our even triple up.

This would be good, OP. Whatever you're trying to accomplish, you can almost certainly accomplish it better without short stacking 4/8. (But I've done it at 4/8 when I was nearly out of ready cash and worried I was going to tilt.)



Theoretically I don't buy that it's "never a good idea" at any stakes but it's rare when it could be a good idea. At stakes where you can feasibly beat the rake, if you were somehow a poor postflop player who still understood preflop hand values, you could probably eke out a tiny win and sit in the game to learn how to play better. But in contrast, in NL (1) the reverse implied odds laid by bad players to good players are mitigated by short stacking (2) the blinds themselves are minuscule (3) the eventual best hand may be knocked out, benefiting the all-in player, which is rarer in fixed-limit.

One more case where short stacking is good. If I happen to have say 8 big bets UTG+2 and then lose a hand to have 3 big bets UTG+1, I'm not rebuying until my button for obvious reasons.


Often what you really want is a hybrid: someone opens to $15, call, call, call, you shove for $150 with AK, fold, fold, call, fold. Now you're in great shape, at least even with the caller's range with $45 dead in the pot.

But that's live play. Online, NLHE is much more a game of light 3 bet and 4 bet semibluffing, and pro short stackers can do this well.

This is poor or at least incomplete reasoning. I point this out not to advocate short stacking at 4/8 but to prevent it from leading to other poor reasoning.

If you ever have the bad end of a cooler on the turn and want to 3 bet, you wouldn't have enough for a full river bet. Short stacking would save you money. Your AA makes quad aces and pays off their KQs royal flush just as often as your KQs royal beats their AA for quad aces (except where you fold KQs preflop).

Of course if you make better postflop decisions than your opponents, you'll get extra value more often than they will. But that's a skill issue, not a "I'm always on the good side of the cooler and never on the bad side," issue.

FWIW if people don't adjust you can print $

Like take a dude that opens 20% HJ and only calls off 6%. You have A8o and it's +EV to jam 20 bb over 3 bb.

If you're interested in shortstacking NL I wrote an anniversary post about it:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/3...05/?highlight=

Thanks. FYI, Miller is the first author of SSHE. This matters because if he weren't the first author, the book would be marginally intelligible instead of well written.

I shortstack a LAG $5-5 PLO game a reasonable amount. I have no doubt it's profitable but the variance is extremely frustrating and I'm obviously not running good. Still, a good way to railbird the game and play a +EV game while thinking about how to play deeper situations profitably.

My opinion is the exact opposite of yours. IMO when you sit down with a short stack, i.e. 25 to 40bb, your goal is to get as high a percentage of your stack in the pot as possible with a probable equity advantage. When I'm on the button with a premium hand after 4 limpers and I rasie to 10bb I want them all to CALL, not fold!

To answer the OP, this is really the difference between shortstacking LHE and shortstacking NL - in LHE you just can't get a high enough percentage of your stack in the pot with a probable equity advantage.

I'd define short stacking as any stack that is essentially (if not literally) all-in preflop. That is, if they see a flop, there is no or little choice to fold.

I don't consider 40 bb to be short stacked, and even 25 bb is kind of meh. I'd say 10 bb is for sure and 15-20 would be the borderline. The goal, as DTx points out, is to GII PF with any modest edge and reload if you fail.

Exactly, and this applies to NL too - I usually have to wait 2 or 3 hours to pick up a premium hand when I shortstack live NL and I use every single hand while I'm waiting to profile the villains.

One difference between shortstacking PLO vs. NL, at least where I play PLO (Global Poker), is you can play a lot more hands shortstacking PLO, especially in position. On Global Poker if 5 villains see a flop and hero makes the nuts or a huge draw, hero is very likely to get at LEAST one villain to stack off. So hero can limp along with essentially any hand that make the nuts in at least one way, and even call a raise with a hand that can make the nuts in several ways. You just have to be able to get away postflop when it's correct to do so.

IMHO the table conditions can dictate what constitutes a "short stack". IMHO if your stack size is likely to only let you play 2 streets you are shortstacked. For example if I buy in for $80, raise to $12 and get 2 callers, there's $36 in the pot and I have $68 behind. I'm probably going to have to play 3 streets there. But if my raise to $12 gets me 4 callers, now there's $60 in the pot and I have $68 behind. Unless the flop is just sick, like if I have KK or QQ and the flop contains an A, I'm all in.

I have never seen a live low-stakes NL table where 25bb was not a CLEAR short stack. As a matter of fact, if I'm at the table and I see that preflop raises are seldom getting more than 1 caller I get up and go do something else.

At $1-3 PLO I would take anything $100 or less to be a short stack. It's just semantics but I'd never had any reason to doubt that was consensus until now.

I moved NFS's post, if you're looking for it.


I always thought that the benefit to short stacking had to do with being all in, keeping your equity, and having large stacks in the pot fold away their equity on later streets. They end up losing money to you while correctly playing vs each other. There's nothing they can do because they're getting incorrect pot odds on later streets. You're AI and can't fold. In spots in NL games, you're printing $ vs them because your $100 sidepot isn't enough to call $1000 vs another big stack.