Just sanity-checking a hand from last night. This is my first hand post, so apologies if I screw it up.

$1/$2 NL live.

Preflop:

Hero is in the BB with about $45-$50, just about everyone has him covered. 5 limps, SB completes, hero has 99, raises to $15, all 6 limpers call (!). Folks like to gamble in this room, so we could easily see all kinds of connectors and trash, although 6 calls is a bit unusual. Hero is new to the table, but has seen folds around to this kind of raise on multiple occasions, especially when raising to $20.

Flop: 4 6 8
Pot: about $85.
SB checks,
Hero: ???

This flop hits trash pretty hard. Are we shoving, c/c, or c/f? My play was a shove, because we're new to the table and have to c/c rather than c/f because we committed pre-flop and can't make solid reads in a field this big with donks, so we get some hands to fold by shoving rather than c/c, and we might be getting value from a field full of spades + 5s and 7s.

instashove. what are you hoping to flop when you raise short-stacked? hell, you probably could have just shipped it pre and gotten the same results. but at least now you might get overcards to fold and if you shove pre and get called by AK they have two more streets to suck out.

Matches my reasoning, although I disagree about shipping it pre because people in this room generally aren't calling $45 pre after limping $2 without TT+ (quite likely even QQ+ or KK+), AK, maybe some or all of AQ-AT,KQ if we're lucky. Then again, I didn't think they were all calling $15 either. A raise to something closer to $20 might have been better, but IME the recreational gambling threshold in the room is $17-$20, even with all those limps in.

As played, instashove this great flop and reload if you lose. You only need to win this pot around a third of the time to be profitable.

Its pretty unusual to be sitting with only 25bb, but shipping it preflop in this spot (and often taking down the $12) is standard anyway.

You can't really expect to be able to play profitably post flop out of position with pocket nines after raising any decent amount.

e.g. we raise a 5th of our stack and then get 2 calls. The pot is now equal to our remaining stack and any cbet basically commits us but the flop is often going to have a T, J, Q, K or A.

Only sensible reason I can think of to be short stacking like this is because we want to spend some time getting a feel for the table before sticking more money on the table.

You are probably beat pf. c/f

Thanks. I guess shipping it only gets us calls from QQ+, AK, AQ at these tables, which are (except AK) manifestly unlikely after it's limped around.

We are short-stacking because we've shown ourselves to be profitable doing so over 6 months playing in an unusually tough game, we are working on our hand-reading skills, we don't have the BR to buy in for 100 BB, and we are OK staying at the table with 50-75BB if we double, especially if there is frequent straddling. We've only recently realized how to properly adjust to a straddle, differentiate dangerous players from players with only some clue (e.g., weak-tight) from donks, etc., so we need some more table time anyway. We are able to exploit both donks and regs because neither has a good feel for our (standard) 3-betting range, and we have a natural advantage while we are working on the people skills parts of the game because we are short-stacked.

We also don't mind being bored out of our skulls when we run bad pre, and any 2p2ers we run into think we are an idiot because we buy in for the minimum.

Glad you appreciate just how horribly tight and boring you have to play here to be profitable. So easy to go 3 hours without being able to do anything.

ship flop, the only better board woulda been if you flopped a 9. Plus, no one limped with 10 10+. Its 1/2...I can see raising and shipping in a tourney but in a loose 1/2 game I usually just check pf. Leave a ton of players in the hand and I only continue when I flop a 9. Super nitty but effective in 1/2 live

btw, are you royalty?

^^LOOOL^^

I think you should be shoving pre... you got 20bb or so... just jam!! Imean, it is a ridicolous raise, over 6 limpers, but as you said, they like to gamble, so throw your 50$ in, get two callers and expect to win, a fair amount of the time. Now you put yourself into akward spot, pot is 85 and you got like 30-35$ left, if you shove, you do so betting 1/3 of the pot! now you might get 3-4 callers and are in a bad spot, cause niw they try to run you down. you might be beat now, cause of your raise pre, now one of the villans might have a hand like buttom two... a hand he maybe wouldve folded pre!!!