The buyin at Winstar (and most 1/2 and 1/3 games I believe) is $100 but at Winstar when you get stacked you can use 1 short buy, which is 50% of the min, so at that point you can buy-in once for $50.

Honestly, no - it's just too boring for me. I'm an LHE player that's what I've mostly been playing. Ironically, though, I've been using a shortstack strategy with some success at online uPLO. Glad to hear you're getting your bankroll built.

I'll share a story just for entertainment purposes.

The other night I went to Winstar to play 4/8LHE, but the game had broken and there wasn't even a list. I didn't want to just turn around and leave so I thought what the hell, I'll play some shortstack NL and try not to get too bored. It's a learning experience no matter how you look at it.

Dream Crusher is right - the minimum buyin is $100 for both 1/2 *and* 1/3. Does anyone else find that really strange? I figured the shortstack strategy would obviously work better at the 1/3 table, but I couldn't convince myself the players wouldn't be better, and I wanted to play against bad players, so I bought into the 1/2 game for $100.

On my very first hand I pick up AQo in the cutoff after 4 limpers. I was actually pissed, I wanted to observe a few orbits before I started to play! But I knew I had to raise there so I raised to $15 and got 2 callers. I completely whiffed all 5 board cards, but both villains checked all the way to the river and I had the best nothing. So already I'm up to about $130 - not exactly shortstack territory!

A few hands later when I'm UTG I pick up AKs. Again, dammit! I wanted to build up some reads first! But I raised to $10 and got 4 callers. The flop came AQ4r. I knew when I saw the A that the rest of my stack is going in the middle. With 4 villains in the pot I have to bet close to pot on the flop (I decided on $45), which only left me $75 behind. I'm not bet/folding over a third of my stack. I bet $45, one of the villains went all in and I called. He flipped over A4o. Luckily for me the queen paired on the turn and I more than doubled up.

Suddenly I have almost $300 in front of me!!! I was like, well, CRAP I'm guess I'm going to have to play some deepstack! I know I could have just cashed out, but I just can't do that. It just seems like such bad sportsmanship and etiquette to me. When other people win big pots and immediately cash out I make sure to give them a good glare as they're racking up their chips.

Anyway, for the next two hours I never picked up another premium hand and I never hit another flop. My $300 frittered down to $200 as a combination of limping along in late position with speculative hands, calling raises in multiway pots hoping to catch a miracle flop, or calling with pocket pairs that didn't flop a set. I got up when I was down to $200 so that I could "book a win".

The game did show me why it will be a long long long long time before I'll be a good deepstack NL player, even at 1/2. I don't remember the action in the hand, but there was a hand I was not involved in where the guy to my right bet $100 into a 9875 board after check-calling the flop. The other guy folded and the bettor showed Q9o. The other guy had pocket jacks. I would NEVER have the guts to put $100 in the pot on essentially a bluff like that. I used to have trouble bluffraising to $16 on the LHE tables for crying out loud! (I don't now). There was a 3rd guy who was raising about 1/3 of his hands pre and c-betting about 80%. There was a hand where the 3rd guy raised and c-bet a 732tt flop. The guy to my right put him all in for about $110. The guy to my right had T7o, the 3rd guy had a flush draw that didn't come in. After the 3rd guy left the guy to my right explained that the other guy was betting a lot of crap, betting on the come and getting there, and wanted to trap him. I would NOT have the guts to make that kind of a move for $100+.

There was no point to any of this, I was just sharing.

I have a question regarding BRM when you're going to be primarily a shortstack player.

The conventional wisdom is 20 to 30 buyins, so if you're a deepstack player at $1/$2 you should have a bankroll of $4000 to $6000. Some conservative players even say 40 bis (which I do not consider unwise).

So if you have consisent access to a game where the min buyin is, say, $60, do you really only need a bankroll of 20 to 30 x $60 or $1200 to $1800?

And what if you do double or triple up - are you suddenly practicing BAD BRM if you stay at the table to work on your deepstack game rather than cashing out immediately?

Im not a BRM expert but if the main goal is to maintain a low risk of losing your bankroll, then I think its fine to continue playing deep if you get a couple double ups. You could have 20k on the table and $1800 off the table, and it doesnt matter if you lose that 20k. You still have 30 buyins behind to cover you.

Im not sure the variance of shortstacking compared to deepstack since Ive never done it. From what I have read, assuming you are doing it well it should minmize your bankroll swings a bit but severely clip your overall profitability.

I think he means that if hes using a shortstack bankroll of only $1200-$1800, is it OK to keep playing with $120-$150 on the table even though that is now 10% of his bankroll.

If I understand the question correctly then the answer is No. I wouldnt do it. If your bankroll is that short you need to leave when you double up. Also, variance when shortstacking is much much greater.

If your primary concern of BRM is to prevent going bust it doesnt matter if you have 10% or 99% of your bankroll on the table. As long as you have the same number of buyins off the table, your risk of ruin is unchanged.

There may be other money management reasons to quit after a double up, but from a strict risk of ruin standpoint it doesnt matter.

I might be confusing the terms "variance" and "swings", but it seems to me that the swings would be much smaller playing a short stack because you're risking less with each bet and you're getting your money in as an equity favorite more often (as opposed to true deepstack play where putting 100+bbs in the pot as a pure bluff is necessary at a lot of tables). What do you think I'm missing?

Short stackers play much fewer hands than guys playing deeper. The more hands you play the quicker you get to the "long term" as far as realizing equity. That's the main reason and simplest explanation why variance is lower when playing deeper.

I would also guess that shortstackers get themselves into a lot more ~fiddyfiddy preflop flips.

GshortstackingflipperG

I'm not sure what made this pop into my head, but something made me remember fluxboy's raisesizing strategy of always raising to 10% of his stack. One poster told him it's an awful idea but didn't explain why, and several posters said it was actually brilliant.

Here are my thoughts: The only tweak I would make to it is to make sure that the MINIMUM raise size is whatever the table conditions are telling you is the maximum size that will be called by worse hands. For example if you buy in for $80 and you've been sitting there for 2 hours waiting for a premium hand, and in those 2 hours you've seen hands where 4 people limp and a raise to $16 gets called by all 4 limpers, I wouldn't raise to $8 when I finally pick up a premium hand just because it's 10% of my stack - I'd probably make it at LEAST $16.

Two reasons - 1. I want the pot to be as big as possible while I have a probable equity advantage and 2. I want to set up a trivial flop shove.

I also would raise more OOP than IP.

Thoughts? Other than that I think his strategy is fine.

winning strat at 1/2 basically revolves around pure value lines against stations and forcing yourself to realise your draw equity as cheaply as possible, bluff less, semi-bluff less and value bet thin - especially on the river.

short-stacking is neither here nor there. i like playing deep-stacked because I have better implied odds with speculative hands against folks that can't fold top pair. but the key dynamic at 1/2 is as above. if you want to tweak that into a short stack strat to reduce variance, go for it.