I don't want to get into the whole flaming war.

I used to basically pro ss on Stars when they screwed up their buyin structure (feel free to flame, I'm embarassed.) I played 20bb cap for a while for rakeback also. So I have a TON of experience shortstacking.

IMO it's only really a problem if you have guys who are experienced or aggro shortstackers. If they're basically just going to play fit or fold, or play LP, you can still win a decent amount.

I'm fine with LP short stacks b/c you can often iso them with basically like any broadway, and then stack any TP. If they're doing dumb stuff like l/c 76s pre, you can just exploit the hell out of that.

Just realize that you have very little in the way of implied odds, and hands like small pp's go down in value because you don't have setmining odds and they aren't folding pairs so you have no fold equity.

If you have competent, aggro shortstackers who employ a decent aggro raise/shove strategy preflop, just leave.

Example: Couple limpers, I make it $15 pre with AQ, 1 deep caller and a crappy LP fish calls for $60. Flop is AKJss. LP fish donk shoves for his last $48 or so. I actually agonize because of the nit behind me, but I call. Nit folds.

LP fish shows JTo. He misses, I win. He leaves.

Another example. Couple limps, ss limps. I make it $15 on the button with QJdd, get 2 calls. Flop J46 r. Checked to me, I bet $25, short stacker calls for half his stack. Turn is a Q. I bet his last $30. He instafolds.

I see those kind of horrid ss's all the time. I'm fine with them.

Kid, if you can't beat the rake, beat your wife

Most people who short stack in my games do it because they know they suck and they don't want to risk a whole 100bb at once. They are all pretty much dead money. If I saw one who was playing a good short stack strategy, doubling up and leaving every time, I wouldn't care one bit. Good for him.

Of course, he's going to look like a total wierdo to loose recreational players but whatev.

I am also one who thinks about the health of games. Perhaps I am overlooking the damage that maybe 20 guys like Flux worldwide can do to the games. As a relatively old guy who started playing cards pre hole cam, I have seen the pool of regular donators change for the worse as the games became less friendly as younger players more or less took over. People used to joke non-stop at the table as they peeled "just one more" with a budgeted portion of their pension check. I haven't seen this since around the time party closed down for US players. There's nothing I can do about this though. Loosing is not too much fun if there isn't a perception of camaraderie.

I'm kind of happy that a player who puts as much thought into the game as Flux will leave after taking $50 from the table. I'm also happy he shares his strat on hit and running with 50bb.


I see PIF's type shortstackers all the time and love to play with them. I also see guys who may play a style more like Flux's, but probably more with some Harrington tournament strat for when the BB is $1m and your stack is $8m and you want to ship w/ A7o.

I rarely discuss what's going on in a thread, but there is an exception to every rule.

I think a thread dealing with short stackers is a good idea for this forum. Everyone comes up on tables with people buying in short. How to deal with the situation is tool that people should have in their tool box. The fact that a skilled practitioner of short stack strategy is posting in the thread only enhances the value of the thread. You're getting an inside view of the rare short stacker that you should be worrying about.

Short stacking is a legitimate way to play poker. It can be profitable if done well. In a true confessions moment here, I spent a month short stacking at one point on line when I was in a rut in my game. It is not an easy way to play. You have to be far more aware of the other players than when playing deeper. And yes, I was profitable doing it.

Saying a good short stacker hurts the game is like saying a good deep stack player hurts the game. If there are 4 players at a table that are better than you, you aren't going to win money, whether they are deep or short. If a table only has 6 players and a short stacker leaves, the game might break. However, if the short stacker wasn't there, the game would have never got started.

While Moneymaker started the NL boom, cash play would have never taken off if not for the same time poker rooms started limiting the amount you could buy in. NL used to be unlimited. The purists complained that the rooms were ruining the games by not letting people buy in for 200, 300 or more BB. What is forgotten is that without this limit, NL almost never ran in any poker room. The reason that unlimited buy in amounts are usually only found at the highest blind level in a room is that if 1/2 had unlimited buy in amounts, players would leave the higher blinds and move to 1/2.

Therefore, we aren't going to do witch hunts to tell people they shouldn't be posting or even playing. Suggesting so is going to get one a vacation, an infraction or both. You can always you don't like playing short stackers, but that is a different matter.

Really well thought out comment. I agree with pretty much everything.

Borgata is a pretty big poker room, and I've almost never seen younger guys playing effective short stack strategy. Maybe it's just the room I play in. Do you guys actually see a lot of people playing like this live? There are a lot of awful fish that don't want to buy in $200 at a 1/2 game. I want them in the game, so if they're only going to buy in $72 that's fine with me.

I think another thing that people tend to overlook is even if we're playing with 100bb, we need to adjust to short stack fish who start 50bb or less. So it's actually worthwhile to at least look into short stack strategy to figure out how to get their money easier.

Even fish who start deep stacked often end up with less than 50bb because they don't top off. So we need to know how to best exploit them even if we're always playing deep.

As long as the buy-in levels are unchanged, this is true. You could maybe start a petition at your local card barn to up the buy-in. Personally, I am glad that people can buy in for 33 bbs.

Back in the limit days, you couldn't book a $1500 win in the smallest game in the house--usually 4-8. This happens all the time these days.

I often like to buy in @50bb simply because I'm a recreational player without a bankroll. Where I play, it's not uncommon to sit 9-handed and only 1 or 2 players have 100bb or more. My poker room used to have 1/2 100max tables (now only 200max), and I think because of that a lot of people got used to playing shorter. Once I double up (usually doesn't take too long), I'm as deep as anyone else at the table, and I limit my risk initially. So at my games, I don't see any problem playing short.

A couple sessions back, I was playing at a table with a guy on my left who kept buying in for $50 (table min). I loved having him in that seat because he only played about 1 hand every 1/2 hour--if that--and his raises were always way above the table standard open often with no limpers in front. Almost the entire table realized what he was doing and usually folded their $2 blind or limp to his $20 raise. It's nice to have someone on your left who is playing ubertight. I was essentially on the button twice every orbit. When he was in, I was mostly out.

So generally I first try to figure out why any given player is on the short stack. Is one just unlucky, playing with scared money, hardly playing at all, only limping, only pushing, making huge polarizing raises? I general, I don't play drastically differently against a villain with $100 than I do against one with $200 at 1/2. It's so common that it really isn't much of a consideration unless the stacks are even smaller.

Edit: Or I just call a floor and get all the SS's banned. That's another strategy...

Hi guys,

Poke4Fun:

Now, don't hold back here, tell me what you're really feeling.



Actually, I think your views are quite valid. If I played for fun, I would feel no different. Alas, I don't play for fun. I believe on one thread I mentioned that if I were out to enjoy myself, I wouldn't play cards. That is still true. Actually, I derive more satisfaction out of figuring out the puzzle of poker than actually playing the game. For me it's a business, a humble one at that ... but we all start somewhere. And if your business is making your rivals happy you're probably doing something wrong.

One thing I think may have value for a recreational player, however, is to be mindful of how your attitudes affect your play. As a social player, I would assume that you probably feel somewhat responsible for keeping the energy at a place that makes the game enjoyable. This will involve being sensitive to others experiences, perceptions, and expectations. How this affects your play, and what effect it has on your EV, may simply be a tax you are willing to shoulder for the enjoyment of the game, however that's is a lot of luggage to carry in a game where the edge for any winning player is decidedly slight.

All the best to you, and no hard feelings.

Johnny:

I hear you about how the games were, and how they've changed for the worse. FWIW, I'm mindful of this and put a fair amount of effort into making the game as enjoyable as possible for others. Given the constraints of how I play this can be a bit of a task. However, Angel Largay once mentioned that if you meet the needs of others, they will meet your own. Nothing occurs in a vacuum. So I've learned to be social, let others tell me their stories, and some of them are genuinely enjoyable. Since my mishaps at 2-5 (arrogance was my undoing), I've learned to work within an environment. In fact, I received a compliment the other day which was exceptionally validating:

"Flux ... of all the people to lose to, you're my favorite."

So for anyone out there reading this, please make the game fun for others regardless of what strategy you adopt. The average low stakes player isn't there for financial needs, but emotional. Provide that, and you can eat their souls with nary a whimper.

A happy fish is a tasty fish.

Venice:

I'm more than happy to contribute, but in all honesty my skill is marginal. And I'm not sure that at these stakes one can really move into the subtle areas. The nuances simply aren't applicable. For a while, I applied a little game theory to my strategy, but abandoned it when I discovered it was more profitable to play my hands virtually face up. As for the effect that discussing short approaches has, I'm not as guarded in this regard as others. However, that may simply be because I don't, at this stage, know any secrets that a few calculators and simulators can't provide the answer to. Beyond this, however, my experience with sharing my exact strategy with others has proven to be a dismal failure. At first, I thought it was simply a lack of discipline, but I now know that to be incorrect.

When playing, I value my strategy above all other considerations. My skill set is very specific. I never allow the conditions to dictate how I play. I choose where and when I make my stand. You could say I always play on my home turf. The moment emotion creeps in, the game is over. This requires some sensitivity to when you are on the verge of slipping off your A-Game. You know how in PNLH, the authors talk about commitment thresholds? There are also emotional commitment thresholds. I found it happens much sooner than many are aware of. For me, it occurs when I peek at my cards before it's my time to act. That's my subconscious alert that I'm getting impatient. That I've lost the plot.

So I know that if others tried to play like me they would fail, fall into a deep depression, or hang themselves. Probably all three. Likewise, I know my bankroll wouldn't last a single session if I attempted the sort of aggression promoted in Doyle's Super System. The trick is to discover the attributes that are unique to you, train them, then bring those to the table. And to be conscious of the thresholds that indicate when you are on the verge of slipping away from your strengths.

And I've babbled enough.

Take care everyone and, hey, have a Merry Christmas!

All the best,
Flux

You hit it on the head...probably 6 of the 9 players keep buying in for $100....and their styles fluctuate but I would say more often then not you will have an effective stack of about $100 when playing a hand at my card room.

I started this thread basically because I was starting to notice that my most successful nights were usually when there were at least 3 or 4 people with 150bb stacks or higher. I ran bad for a little while and I would notice that every time I sat down and there were a lot of people with stacks of $80-$150 I had a hard time booking a nice win. I would have small wins and then I would lose it back...essentially breaking even. I just wanted to know what adjustments you guys would recommend for this. It is probably just going to be a more high variance form of nlhe when the average stack is about $100, but I feel like tighter opening ranges might not be the only way to exploit these numb nuts! I was just struggling to figure out what else I could work on, and trust me the jabroneys are NOT using solid ss strategies, they just buy in short or chip down because they limp every freaking hand...Thnx for the replies I actually found some good advice in all that arguing that has taken place!

P.S. flux makes a lot of good points...nice posts

This is kind of what I wanted to focus on when I started the thread.

I guess me buying in for 73 today and cashing out for 675 isn't good? Even short stacked u can be tricky. The times I bought in max I had to reload. Maybe It's mental to me

Some people think check-raising is unethical:
http://www.worldofpoker24.com/the-check-raise-tactic

Or lobbing a tennis ball with the sun at your back:

I just disagree.

Poker is a battle where you have to figure out how to beat people no matter what strategy they use. I don't think anything is gained by criticizing people who use a strategy we don't like.

I am ALOT younger than u but I competly agree about this first part. Poker for older people (including donators with a huge br) isnt as much about the money. It is about the comraderie. I really wish that people would joke more at the poker table and have a more relaxed demenour. I mean if u come to the casino at 10:00am on a weekday, dont wear an IPOD, dont wear sunglasses, makes jokes and engage in table talks with other guys (not neccassarily poker related) especially the regfish, dont shortstack if u r a winning player and can afford to buyin for more, and dont leave when u double up.

I have no idea what this sentence could even possibly mean. His own comments are that he goes to the same room over and over, buys in short, plays nitty, wins a decent sized hand, and gets up and leaves. He then repeats the process at other rooms in the same area. He then tells his story in the Live Play forum on one of the biggest poker websites in the universe.

How is this "not being noticed"? Does he have the mind erasing gizmo from Men in Black? How do people not notice what he's doing?

As far as it working for him, well, let's just say that many people would be skeptical as to just how well it is doing so. According to him, he's beating 1/2 NL for basically the ceiling winrate while employing a shortstack, rathole strategy. He also posted a graph which makes it appear that he never loses. Have we here in this forum the greatest 1/2 NL player who has ever lived?

This will clearly happen every time you buy in for 37xBB

When I first started playing live, a 5/10 pro recommended I take a short stack strategy because nobody knows how to play against a short stack live. Since I felt I had an edge against the competition I decided just to buy in for the max.

Well, one day I was down to under 10 big blinds (2/5 game). I don't claim to be an expert on short stacking but I have significant experience playing as a short stack in thousands of online single table tournaments (6-max, 9-man, 10-man double or nothings, low-middle-high stakes). What I found was that nobody, even the online pros, really knew how to play against me. Time and time again i got it all in with my opponent either dominated or in a position where I had a significant advantage (ie overpair vs 2 undercards).

The other great advantage I found with shortacking was that when I raised (ie had enough chips to raise rather than push) none of the good players wanted to play with me. Good players specifically target big chip stacks. If a player has 2 to 4+ buyins in front of them, not only are good players trying to play with that player, but other good players are trying to move to that table to play with the guy. With a short stack, your raises are often only called by the bad players which is a great spot to be in.

Lastly, the short stack strategy is the EASIEST strategy to play. I found playing with a short stack forced me to tighten up my game and removed many of the leaks that i sometimes exhibit. You are often just employing a push/fold strategy in which case you just need the necessary experience to recognize the likely ranges of your opponents.

It would not surprise me one bit if Flux is generally getting his money in the middle as a huge statistical favorite resulting in high profit margins.

These games are incredibly beatable!

Two reasons to shortstack:
1. Play a proper shortstack strategy (rare at 1/2)
2. People are scared to lose 200-300 in one hand. (run over scared people)

Dear god, you're at a table of bad players, who have a short stack, but almost certainly don't know how to play with it. This is free money. Honestly these are my favorite kinds of games. I buy in max always, would be 300 in my place. I easily have everyone covered, my mistakes will be cheaper than normal.

Short stackers who "like to see flops" are automatically bad players. Take their money.

1. Raise preflop, when you play.
2. Cbet flop.
3. If they call, look for tells, look at texture, consider barreling if board suggests draws for them or you suspect that they are weak.
3a. If they raise, evaluate.

There are times that you can call preflop, but mostly you should resist this at these tables. Hands like suited connectors and small pairs go way down in value as your opponents don't have enough money to give you the implied odds. If the table is passive enough postflop, you can raise with impunity in late position.

Your biggest risk at these tables is to resist the urge to toss $2 in the pot like everyone else. Use that $15 to raise once or twice per orbit.

You're not going to win any $400 pots in this game but adding $10 or $40 per orbit is good times.

lol.

It could possibly mean that half the population hasn't noticed Flux. This is likely since most of the people in the world live overseas and don't go on 2+2.

It could also mean that in a town that has over 8 $1-$2 NLHE games going on nightly, most of the players don't sit around and worry about a guy who plays 2-3 hands every two hours and averages leaving with a $50 profit.

Pretty awful attempt at a save IMO, we both know your statement was ridiculous. The man's own posts make it clear that the people in his rooms are aware of his presence and strategy.

However, who would really care? He's at a table for no more than an hour, probably less. If he's there longer, it is because he's bleeding BIs.