I was winning big the other day and honestly I am not so good playing deep stack. I had in front of me a little more than 6 buy-ins. I really wanted to play since the table was soft so I stayed. In the end I played too over confident and I lost 3 buy-ins playing like an idiot.

What's your strategy when deep stack? Do you just leave and play on another table?

Phrase your question better and you might get better answers.

Sitting on $1,000 while everyone else is sitting on $100 doesn't actually involve deep stack strategy, perhaps tilt strategy.

There were another 2 weak players with 4.5x and 3x buy-ins in front.

The first rule is to realize that your (or their) positional advantage will increase as you get deeper. Every street will become relevant and playable, so situations that uncommon become more likely. Because of this it becomes more important to get position on the deep stacked player(s) that you feel are the weakest.

You can call a little bit lighter preflop with hands that have a high return potential. Starting hands that can make 5 card hands (nut straights and big flushes) are going to have a lot more value if you can get in cheap, while high cards hands and big pairs that figure to max out at 2 pair and sets have less value on the later streets than normal.

With all that said I think the mistake I see most commonly is that people who are inexperienced with a deep stack and aquire one tend to place way too much value on their big pairs on later streets. They start to call raises that make sense when playing under 200BB without making a plan for the later streets that will now be relevant.

I've been trying very hard to focus on exploiting this specific leak while also keeping in mind that we can (and should) still get the same amount of value from our premium hands up front but always keep in mind that when raises and later street action goes in we need to be able to make (relatively) big layouts with our better 1 pair and worse 2 pair hands without letting it go to our heads.

I'll post this again although I've said it a few times in the past couple weeks. As you get deeper the other deep stack players become your target. Learn about their tendancies, learn as much as you can about what they do in specific situations so that when big money goes in you have as much information as possible.

All in all if you can't seat change to a good position or if you honestly don't know whether you have an advantage over the other deep stacks (normally they got those for as reason as well) then there is no shame in booking a big win. It's a great moral booster and the extra money can do wonders in increasing you confidence in later sessions. Take a couple breaths and a walk if you need to, access the situation, and go with your game plan. If you want to set a stop loss on your stack then do it, if you decide that you can exploit a player than do it, if you decide you're uncomfortable w the dynamics and having 1k extra next time you play will be good for you and a big potential loss might not be worth the risk then hit the cage.

Thank you so much. Very informative post!

Excellent post, sungar! Thank you.

Wow! Deep stuff on deep stack.

Pretty much lost me right here.

I guess if the question is "how do I lose less money with deep stack?", then above answer would be suitable.

However, if strategy to maximize EV is what you're searching for, playing only cards with nut draws is far from it.

Deep stack strategy is all about swapping chips in small pots and chipping away your opponents piece by piece. Big pots with deep stacks? Few and far between, because whales that would play for 200bb with less than near-nuts are long gone.

If anything, strategy should involve convincing your opponents that you're loose in all pots, when reality is that you are loose only in small pots, and then you set them up for medium size pots and might even get lucky with huge pots.

RP is right because many players make the same mistake with implied odds. They look at the stack size and assume that their IO = stack/bet. You need to understand the maximum pain a player will accept to stay in with a certain range of hands. If a player isn't going to put in more than 100BB with TP, then you aren't going to win 400BB from him.

RP and Venice: Are you advocating bluffing much more as stacks get beyond 200bb?

If so what methods of bluffs do you advocate? ie. xr cbets, floating, oop floats, double and triple barrels?

Also what boards are you looking to manipulate deep? ie are A high boards better to float because one pair is most likely from V and you are trying to rep made draws or rep strength in some other fashion? Or more dynamic flops?

Hard to top the advice so far. Here's my two cents.

Think how you got deep stacked. Stick to that same plan. While big stacks can push around the 1 to 3 buy in stacks, those small stacks won't fear you as everyone else has them covered already, and you're no different.

You can make a deep stack work in your favor by bullying those wet flops, c bet turns and rivers, but you risk losing a buy-in or two.

I used to feel pressured to play more when deep, like people expect me to give them a chance to win back what I took. Don't fall for this. Stick to what's been working for you, keep grinding. Look for your spots.

A few things to consider:

1. As stacks get deeper, position matters more and more.

2. We need to be comfortable making river value bets and folding to raises.

3. Our bet sizes should generally increase across the board.

4. We should be willing to make big multi street bluffs but should look for spots where opponents have narrow/capped ranges.

5. Our opponents don't have a plan for the hand when they build a pot -- but we must. some players will check raise a preflop raiser with something like 66 on K 3 2 because... why not. Don't let this be you. If you build a pot out of position you better have a very good reason and you better win the pot.

6. With hands that we arent getting 3 streets of value with, it is more okay when deep to give free cards on early streets to avoid bloating pots. Versus aggressive players this can also induce bluffs.

7. Look for spots to overbet. With 100 bb stacks, you can get your stack in the middle betting pot or less 3 times in any live game where more players see flops and and preflop raises are larger. Don't be afraid to overbet flops and turns -- you'll have to if you want to get 200 bb in without a raise.

8. Deep stacks create free roll opportunities. If you have the nut straight with a flush draw and get raised, consider a shove regardless of stack to pot ratio. While rare in holdem, this kind of free roll can be worth hundreds in EV.

Oh absolutely. Frequency should definitely go up, and bluffing doesn't necessarily have to be huge bets.

Nothing fancy. When V's range is weak against certain board texture, attack it.

You have to keep in mind that if other players don't fold when they do certain things, a lot of these cool fancy types of bluffs won't work. So at end of the day, it's about strength of range and tendencies.

See above. Effectiveness of bluffs involve mostly of player tendencies, basically tells but much more reliable and harder to hide.

Board texture is helpful in the sense that opponents rely so much on it, and because of that, it really reinforces their tendencies, making them easier to read.

RP:

My questions about bluffing were referring to the idea where many TAGs are unwilling to play tptkish hands for more than 100-150bb. If this is so shouldn't we, when 200bb+ deep effective, be trying to get to that threshold and then moving villains off their hands. Doing this requires raises or board development past the flop.

Also another method to reaching these thresholds is to 3! more pre. Doing so however reduces spr and allows Vs to commit easier for more bbs which means we need to make hands more often but can get 200+bb stacks with a set or flush vs Vs tptk+. And lets us win bigger pots against fit or fold TAGs with cbets and double barrels on A high and baby dynamic boards.

I agree with everything above. One concept I would include is bankroll and how you got there.

I think if your say 600bb deep and that is a at least 10 percent or more of your overall bankroll, personally for me I would end up thinking about the money and not playing my best. Conversely if your 600bb deep and this is a small percentage of your overall bankroll (5% or less) I think I could continue and play my best. This assuming other players have you covered.

So if the stack on your table is more than 10 percent of your overall bankroll I probably would think about the money too much.

FWIW, successful LAGs have been practicing this for a while.

I would like to be able to be a successful LAG when the situation warrents but often i get lost in nuance and transition......

Pot size manipulation is very important in deep stack situations as well.