I don't mind playing tight preflop ranges since I'm usually also playing online as well. Helps the time pass while card dead!

LOL at the idea of a live 2-5 game where players don't often open-limp.

2/5 is the biggest game in my room. There is very little limping.

I did qualify by “more aggressive”… Most players don’t open limp in 2/5 in Texas… that’s a 2k cap game and is usually the biggest public game in the room. I’d say my 1/3 1k cap is 50/50 split between regs who never open limp and recs who do a fair bit of limping as well as opening. Lately the 1/3 has been more reg infested and the limping frequencies have dropped.

For whatever little it may or may not contribute to the conversation, if someone is shortstacking to build up a bankroll for eventual full/deepstack play, shortstacking is the opposite of boring.

I don't want to put this in too many words, but unlike fields like music, mathematics, athletics and art where someone with significant natural talent has an almost insurmountable head start over someone with no natural talent, poker comes down to who wants it more 19 times out of 20 if not 99 times out of 100. Seriously, you pick any 2 poker players in the world and I can almost guarantee you that the more successful of the 2 is the one who works harder.

A poker player who WANTS to get better will pay attention to every single hand being played at the table while waiting for their preemies. They will be constantly profiling and re-profiling players. They will be putting players on approximate ranges based on their actions and refining those ranges throughout the hand, and when a rare hand goes to showdown, see if they were right. The player might even pull out a notebook and write down a confusing spot to post it later.

When a shortstacker gets dealt a small pocket pair or suited connector, he obviously has to fold, but he can think to himself, "How would I play this hand if I were deep or full stacked?" and if he's not sure, write that down and post it later.

I have a friend who built his whole bankroll $80 at a time by shortstacking every weekend for a whole year. By the end of that year he had a gigantic mental database in his head which gave him a big head start when he started playing full.

Hope this helped.

FWIW I'd expect that this depends on the casino. My friend that I mentioned in the previous thread never got a single dirty look or rude comment over the entire year. Not once. Most of the casinos I shortstacked at had such diverse player pools that I don't remember ever seeing the same villain twice. There was one casino I played in for several weeks where it was basically the same people every week and I don't even think they noticed what I was doing.

There is nothing unethical about getting up after doubling up. Anyone who doubts otherwise just needs to triple up, get aces all in preflop and get sucked out on once - they'll never feel guilty about getting up again.

In a casino, you cant rathole when you double up. Almost every good short stacker ive ever played against plays a very effective short stack strat, (which is annoying) eventually doubles up, and then sucks at normal stack play. Basically youre going to be deeper stacked, like it or not, unless you wanna go home after playing for an hour (or however long it takes to double up), and spending half your time shortstacked every session means you will be considerably less experienced in the higher leverage spots you run into when you are deeper.

Basically my opinion is that shortstack is EV+, but wasting half your time at a casino not learning anything is harmful to your longterm winrate.


Also do whatever you want, im nit gonna tell anyone how to play or what to do with their money but **** shortstackers, yall suck lol.

Getting up after doubling up is fine, i dont care about hit and run, any anyone who does is a moron, but the rule is you gotta leave the table for an hour if you wanna min buy again, so if your friend was leaving when he doubled up, fine. If he was ratholing and then sitting down again, thats cheating, and i strongly advocate against cheating.

"The" rule is going to vary from poker room to poker room. In the room where I play the most, the time between picking up a big stack and buying in for a small one is forty-five minutes.

In that same room, if you change tables and you have a stack bigger than the maximum buy-in, you are required to go south. This is, of course, bonkers, and opens up an opportunity for abuse, but I have never actually observed anyone exploiting it.

Yes, i shouldve said general rule, my bad.