9 handed at the casino, hero sits with shortest stack at 40bb, rest of the table sits with between 80 and 200bb. Most of the table is loose passive with the exception of villain who's playing LAG, bordering on maniac. Hero started out playing LAG, caught a couple bad beats, then started making mistakes, went and grabbed a snack, came back to the table feeling level-headed and is now playing TAG.

Folded to hero in cuttoff seat, dealt 1010 and raises 3x bb.

Button folds. Villain in SB (stack ~150bb) 3bets to 10xbb. Hero has seen villain 3bet very light (hands like 45o or j5o) several times over the course of this session.

BB folds, hero calls (mistake? should hero just shove? villain has a pretty wide 3bet range here)

Pot: $42
Flop: J89

Villain insta-checks. Hero bets $20. Villain calls after tanking for about 2 minutes. (don't think villain is hollywooding w/ a monster here, in past hands he's insta-called with winning hands, and otherwise folded the next street when he's tanked on the flop or turn)

Pot: $82
Turn: 3

Villain bets $40.
Hero????

Now in this spot the possibility of villain 3 betting light pre flop makes me more nervous here. It'd be easy to put villain on Jx, in which case we're in rough shape. If villain has two overcards though, we're in good shape. I don't see villain on an open ended draw here, especially since hero's holding two 10s.

Is this a shove or a fold situation? Hero has a pocket pair and open ended straight draw with only 1 overcard. What mistakes were made preflop and/or on the flop?

If your going to play with 40BB then yes, this is a shove when a loose player raises preflop. As played, shove flop. You have $60 left so it's a bit big but you need to bet $30 on this flop and you can't fold after doing that. On turn, make a disgusted call. When villain puts you in here there is a good chance your behind, but it's $40 to win $120, can't fold unless your sure your beat.

Way too small an open, especially for a short stack, especially with a tarnished image.

I prob shove pre, tbqh. He folds a lot of hands with 2 overs, which help us a lot, as we get the dead money risk free.

I open shove the flop for the same reason. AP, shove over turn bet. We have FE, real equity, and are committed with 1/2 of our stack in already, imo.

open bigger, 4bet shove pre, shove flop.. reload more chips to 100BB.

Super super super easy ship pre.
And raise it to 4 - 6 bb pre for value.

:grunch:

Top off.

Raise too small, WAY too small for a $1/2 game in LP.

Sitting on $80 I probably just ship over his $20 preflop bet.

On the flop I don't understand his tank at all. Other than sheer confusion at our play so far in the hand. I think the $20 is too small, but then we've got such little money behind anyway.

$40 into $120? That's the rest of your stack right? Call I guess.

I'd have just shipped over his preflop 3-bet, or shoved the flop. Maybe get QQ or AJ or something to fold, otherwise we've got a lot of equity.

3 BB open in LLSNL is bad. 3bb open with short stack and vulnerable hand is realley bad.

As played. Ship pre.

As played ship flop
As played ship turn

I'm ok with playing short stacked at this table. It's quite likely that we will get in a spot where we can make an easy double up as an 80% favorite. However, the fact that you didn't get it all in here preflop tells me you aren't a very good short stacker. If you are going to play short you need to learn how first.

I am not a good short stacker at all to be honest. But that's why I've been playing it more lately -- to get more comfortable with it. My stop/loss is 1 and a half buy-ins for that very reason. It used to be 2 full buy-ins, but 1 and a half is easier on the bankroll (rolled for 2/5 but still nitty with my roll) and if I lose my first buy-in, I'm forced to play short stacked.

I've been reading up on playing short stacked but it's a little hard to find info on playing short stacked in cash games. I have more experience playing short stacked in tournaments (online, anyway), but I think the biggest difference that's throwing me off is the lack of pressure in cash games. In cash games I don't really have to worry about blinding out. Still trying to find the right balance of aggression.

Another thing that makes me nittier playing short stacked cash is when I shove pre in a tournament, if I get any callers at all, it'll usually just be one or two. In the wrong 1/2 game a pre-flop shove can turn into a freakin' family pot.

Only reason not to 4-bet pre is with the intention of gii on most boards. If you think he's 3!ing light, will fold to a 4!, but will call off with an underpair, then it's okay to just call him pre. That's a higher-variance decision, though. Standard move is to ship pre.

As played, this is a trivially easy call on the turn. You beat a good chunk of his range, you're drawing live against the rest of it, and you're getting ~3-to-1.

Shortstack play is very high variance; you're getting all in pre with at best ~ 80% equity and in many cases closer to 50% equity. So it's really not a good solution to your problem. It makes the rake proportionally higher too, thus limiting your wr and potential to increase your bankroll.

You aren't finding much info about shortstacking because most good players play full stacked and competent sser's are an annoyance to them, thus it's generally discouraged as a tactic. If you're insistent on doing it, it's not that hard to figure out the basics by doing a little work on the math behind it.