Rakes' upward creep is exacerbated by monopoly pricing, and the realities of running a business.
Were poker rooms legally allowed for anyone to open up with a set of minimally restrictive regulation, than we would likely see someone open up some popular LLSNL rooms at bars, with a better rake structure--mainly because its something 2+2ers could do.
Granted, minimally restrictive prob includes:
1) House always have enough cash to pay everyone out at once (if bbj, etc)
2) House run a game without cheating
3) X level of security to protect said cash

Problematically, 'gambling' revenues may often get taxed at ridiculous rates, making opening these rooms profitably more difficult.


But to the OP: short stacking is very painful due to rake. Like DGIHarris, I'll leave games if I'm forced into effective shortstacking at LLSNL.

It is painfully obvious that you are not good at the basic concepts and you are butchering the math in order to justify the typical rec-fish mentality of trying to lose the least and win the most.

You cannot simultaneously lose the least and win the most. That is impossible.

Strategies that seek to limit loses always do so at the expense of profit.

You are trying to view the game like blackjack. You are trying to manipulate the situation so that there is no thought required.... Buy in short, play tight, get big hand, push all the money in.

At best, that above strategy would result in a winrate of -$5/hr to $5/hr which can be regarded as more or less breakeven.

Real winning poker is much more complex than you realize as evident by your posts. Winning poker involves manipulating the situation and exploiting the leaks of your villains. There are countless examples of how winning thinking players can use their chip stacks to realize money and value that short stackers are unable to. Floating, stealing, sensing weakness, attacking, using scare cards, etc etc.

This argument is really like trying to explain a sunset to someone born blind. You simply have no idea what you don't know and trying to explain it to you would be an exercise in futility.

All I can tell you is that your arguments and thoughts on short stacking are not revolutionary. We have ALL at one point thought those same thoughts and come up with those same strategies and rec-fish rationalizations. And we have all proven to ourselves that they are far from optimal. And that proof is not conjecture, is not hyperbole, is not born from guessing... That proof comes from cold hard data over thousands of hours of tracking our play and comparing notes on 2+2 and has been seconded, thirded, fourthed... ten thousandthed to death...

What you are doing is rationalizing sub-optimal play. The rationalization is based on placated your ego and hiding your leaks from yourself. This is something losing players are expert in. They have a million reasons and excuses for why the game is unbeatable and every one of those reasons excuses their own horrendous play and awful skill.

If you want to become a winning player, you need to shed that ego and listen to those who know better than you.

Come on dude stop making excuses for why you're not winning. You need to buy in full because it's the mathematically correct thing to do and loosen up some.

Yeah, I use this chart whenever the "short stacking" argument comes up. That chart is floating around all over the place on here, the BQ forum, and Poker Theory.

I find it better articulates "why" and "how" stack sizes can impact overall play. Essentially, the size of your stack has a direct bearing on the "tools" you can put on the table. The more skilled you are, the more tools at your disposal, the better able you will be to exploit villain leaks and tendencies. However, once you limit yourself by way of short stacking you essentially are taking tools off the table and minimizing your skill edge vs your leak ridden opponents.

Imagine this scenario. You have 97 in middle position and there is a super aggro donk 3 seats to your left who raises and calls literally 100% of all hands. He has gotten lucky all night and is sitting at 400bb

Scenario #1 Hero is at 30bb
UTG limps, Hero limps, LP raises to 6bb, super donk calls, folds to Hero, Hero??? Hero has to fold

Flop(14bb) 8 5 J
turn/river 2 / 6 Hero cries

Scenario #2 Hero is at 300bb
UTG limps, Hero limps, LP raises to 6bb, super donk calls, folds to Hero, Hero??? Hero has the chips to make a profitable call

Flop(20bb) 8 5 J
Hero chks, LP bets 12bb, donk calls, Hero??? Hero has the chips to make the call

Turn(55bb) 2
Hero chks, LP bets 30bb, donk calls, Hero??? Hero has the chips and equity to make a profitable call

River(145bb) 6
Hero???? Hero chks, LP bets 100bb, donk calls, Hero c/r shoves all-in, LP tank calls, donk calls...

the above is a great example of how effective stacks, equity, and SPR work together in a complex way to make one situation -EV while the other situation +EV.

This is something that those who champion short stacking don't quite understand.

Anyways, I find that the chart helps.

Of course, limping 97s with 30bb in the first place is ******ed, so it's not really a valid criticism of a short stack strategy. I agree that most people are better off not short stacking, but at least assume they're playing their short stack somewhat correctly when you criticize it.

I am curious as to what makes it profitable to limp call 97s in that situation with 300bb? Do you think it would be good with only 200bb? Bart Hanson's (not saying he's some super authority, just providing an example) 15/25/35 rule would indicate around 200bb being the lower limit for playing 97s, but he also advocates that only against players with predictable ranges and when you're in position. I'm not sure where you see all these 300+bb stack donks who are guaranteed to pay you off so often as to make this a profitable call preflop.

[QUOTE=Maskk;40186300]Rakes' upward creep is exacerbated by monopoly pricing, and the realities of running a business.
Were poker rooms legally allowed for anyone to open up with a set of minimally restrictive regulation, than we would likely see someone open up some popular LLSNL rooms at bars, with a better rake structure--mainly because its something 2+2ers could do.
Granted, minimally restrictive prob includes:
1) House always have enough cash to pay everyone out at once (if bbj, etc)
2) House run a game without cheating
3) X level of security to protect said cash

Problematically, 'gambling' revenues may often get taxed at ridiculous rates, making opening these rooms profitably more difficult.





Well, if the state laws are so different ---THAT different, to where the casino must rape the player in order to provide a decent venue then so be it AND no competition could come in lower.

I have my doubts about that fact though, although I have no idea whatsoever.

What i do know is that various business groups will greedily exploit the patrons IF they are the only game in town. If the people allow them to, then why not.

Something tells me that there is no locality where the taxes are so high (in the states that is) that they must charge max of $25 in a 1-2 game where all across the country the max might be $5 or $6 max total. Now abroad? Like maybe England or France, looool. The government structure there feels they can rape the public on literally EVERY tax, whether rake, income tax, Goods and Sales, whatever.

BQ forum
??

ATT ?
AFT ?

regards

[QUOTE=AintNoLimit;40191024]
In us the max at 12 is at 5 - 6 dollars.
(lool). Coudnt believe this.
In europe (austria) max is at 25 euros.

[QUOTE=dgiharris;40189316]

Imagine this scenario. You have 97 in middle position and there is a super aggro donk 3 seats to your left who raises and calls literally 100% of all hands. He has gotten lucky all night and is sitting at 400bb

Scenario #1 Hero is at 30bb
UTG limps, Hero limps, ....

Competent ss insta-folds He should know he's a coin flip v. the donk

dont play in italy or montenegro. They will shark your money and kill your winrate

Alot of time on this forum we like to assume perfect play but in reality, most LLSNL players would try to limp their way into a pot from MP with 97s. I agree, correct play when at 30bb is to fold 97s but most players after being "card dead" for the last 20 hands are going to limp 97s most of the time. So I think it is a valid hand to show some of the flaws of ss.

I see these guys every single day. TPGK is the nuts in 1/2nl and 2/5nl. Seriously, if I had a nickel for every time I saw a deep stacked down call off 40bb - 80bb turn/river bets with TPGK even when top pair is like a 8 or a T i'd have a lot of nickels. If you are in a pot and a donk is the aggressor on each street and you back into your hand you are getting paid 80%+ of the time absolutely positively you can take that to the freaking bank.

I mean, seriously, most 1/2nl and 2/5nl players just don't fold TPGK overpairs, or 2 pair hands like ever. Even when obvious draws hit. They slam their fists on the table, proclaim in a loud voice, "You got that flush huh, damn it, nice suck out. Whatever, if you got it you got it I call."

seriously, I see this every single session I play at least once every 20 minutes almost like clockwork.

[QUOTE=stran;40226086] I know a "competent" ss should insta-fold 97s but in reality, most LLSNL players are going to try to limp with it. Just human nature. And the example makes my point and I don't think its unreasonable by any stretch.

So you're saying most LLSNL players don't have should play deeper because they don't have the discipline to play short? :P

I think you meant to say, "should play deeper"

My comments have nothing to do with discipline, just stating facts I've observed. But your comment/deduction is interesting. You can interpret what I'm saying that way in a round about fashion. If you look at it that way, a by-product of playing deeper is that it can turn "certain" -EV short stack leaks into a +EV trait-- namely the overlimping/calling with SCs (suited connectors) and S1Gs (suited one gapers).

Truth is, way too many players over limp and limp/call with SCs and S1Gs wayyyy too much. This can easily be -EV when 80bb or less and breakeven at 100bb however once we get deep at 150bb+ it becomes +EV since our villains are terribad and will continue to play 150bb+ as if they were at 80bb to include being biologically incapable of folding TPGK type hands.

So when deep we have the correct implied odds to draw and get paid and playing for stacks super deep (400bb+) is inherently difficult and becomes a lot easier when we back into nutted hands that V will just never believe are in our range.

Okay, but basically, you've laid out two different leaks that players have.

1. Playing hands they shouldn't play preflop.
2. Paying off too much post flop with hands that aren't strong enough.

And then you're basically saying that we have leak 1 and our opponents have leak 2, so we want to play deep in order to minimize our leak and maximize theirs. Well, what if we have leak 2 and our opponents have leak 1? Then we'd want to be playing short, wouldn't we?

I'm not saying people shouldn't be playing deep. I just don't like the argument you're making for it, which seems to assume that we're going to have certain leaks that we're not even trying to fix.

You are drawing deductions from my arguments that are in no way my intent.

When did I ever say that because we have a leak we plug the leak by playing deeper? No. The point I made was saying that playing deeper inadvertently plugs a leak by turning a certain -EV play into a +EV play. That does not mean I'm saying don't fix the -EV leak. I'm just stating a fringe or ancillary benefit.

Second, my point about playing deeper is not about leaks so much so as it is about opportunity. My point is that when we are deeper, there are more ways in which we can bring our skill to bear against our opponent....

lets try an analogy to make my point clearer. Imagine that we are the best jet fighter pilot ever and we are fighting against another recreational pilot via video games. Unfortunately, we are forced to fight in a 1 dimensional space meaning we are forced to fight on a straight line. All of our awesome skill is now minimized due to the limitation of that 1-d space.

Now imagine that instead of fighting in a 1-d virtual space we are now upgraded to a 2-d space. We can now employ more of our skill set vs our weaker opponent and win more engagements. We are still limited but we experience an order of magnitude more "freedom" in employing our skill.

Now imagine that instead of fighting in 2-d virtual space we are now fighting in 3-d virtual space. Now our skill really comes to bear against our lessor opponent as the complexity increases another order of magnitude favoring the more skill player which is us.

Now imagine instead of fighting in a 3-d virtual space we are now fighting in a real space with g-forces, noise, the fear of getting shot at, etc. Now our skill is in full effect and the other opponent just doesn't stand a chance...

This is what I'm talking about with short stack vs deep stack play. The deeper stack you and your opponents are, the more dimensions come into play. The more dimensions come into play the more complex the game becomes. The more complex the game becomes the more it will favor the more skilled player.

that is my point.

Your arguments/deductions about leaks is just a fringe by-product to my main argument.

My argument about leaks is based on the fact that you chose to use an example where the player has a leak that is very -EV for a short stack and potentially +EV for a big stack and then when I questioned it, you basically said, "well, that's just a leak that most LLSNL players have". My entire point is that you making your argument in this fashion weakens the argument. You're totally correct that deeper stacks give you more opportunities, so why even include the short stack player making an awful play as part of your example? It just weakens your argument.