Quote:
Originally Posted by cAmmAndo
Venice I tend to agree with the point made above re: live players poorly adjusting. I suspect the avg o/l player is more aware of stacks and relative position not to mention short stack felting ranges than the avg live player. No?
But most live shorties are just very bad. And don't play a disciplined ss strat.
There is one short stacker who plays a mostly correct push bot strat in my player pool but he's a rare exception.
I am the short stacker cAmmAndo mentions. Some notes:
1) I like the $200-$300 buy-in in 2 5 and win 7BB+ an hour in that game over the years (very large sample size). However, not all that winrate comes from shortstacking - I often play deeper when table conditions favor it, the game is shorthanded, etc... (I do not breakdown my winrate by my stack size). And I play well beyond push bot, a lot of profit comes from exploiting specific bad reg tendencies.
2) I like short buy-ins in 1 2 as well assuming the table has 1 raiser and 3-4 callers dynamic, frequent straddles or a player that raises almost every hand. However for the 1 2 NL table, my preferred short buy-in is $100-$120. While I am sure $50-60 buy-ins can be profitable, you want to have a meaningful amount of money in front of you when you double up and $100-$120 is a very good amount for you to pick up $25-40 uncontested when player A raises, gets couple callers and you jam or to get all-in with high equity when you get called light (Do not ask me for shoving ranges-that's the work you need to do yourself and understand why you do what you do to be successful). Another drawback of a $50-60 buy-in is that live rake is typically in $5-$7 range, so you would be paying disproportionately high rake percentage.
3) Whether you buy-in short or deep, always look for tables with the most money on them.
4) Do not buy-in short at a 1 2 table full of tight passives with most hands being limped pots. At a table like that, you want to be at least semi-deep to have full implied odds with your drawing hands.
5) Short stacking can be extremely good strategy if you are a losing player. In that case, the very buy-in size will force you to play a somewhat TAG game and assuming you get up once you double up and rinse and repeat, it will be hard for you to lose a lot.
6) Short stacking can be fun in a Blackjack/roulette kind of way and you got to enjoy the variance/sweat that comes when you get it in with JJ and race against AQ (with a lot of dead money from in between callers of course!).