QFT

This post is gold.

By definition, a good player capitalizes on weaker players' mistakes. The deeper you are and the farther you are into a hand (i.e. turn and river), the more profitable their mistakes become for the good player because their equity will usually be less and the pot will be bigger.

Also, by playing deep, you don't get committed with stupid hands that you would otherwise not commit with if you were deep. With a 50bb stack, you almost always have to stack off with hands like TPTK and this generally creates high variance situations while diminishing the skill advantage.

You guys are discussing as if buying in 60bb is permanently stuck at 60bb.

It is really only one hand away from 100bb.

This post actually highlights the benefit of playing less than full stack against full stack players. They feel obligated to play a certain way, such as stacking off light against 60bb, whereas 60bb can take advantage of full stack's inability to adjust.

LOL and gg - I think it depends on the kind of fish. If he's going to bet/bet/bet all-in with air or call off absurd amounts, then sure being as deep as possible is great. But if he's a fish because he calls anything pre and folds on the flop to almost any c-bet, then it doesn't really matter if you're only 70 bb deep.

One thing I must say about 60bb is that it's much more SD prone, and a lot of our edge on turn and river is lost.

So then why take the chance of not being deep and getting involved with a fish that will stack off 200bb deep?
This concept just doesn't make sense to me. I don't see how being short stack could ever be more profitable than being deep stack. Assuming we're miles ahead of our opponents in terms of skill.
Like if we have just a tiny advantage or there are some players that are better then us, then yeah, playing a shorter stack might have its advantages.

We are not miles ahead of our competition...that's the thing.

We aren't? Pretty sure even winning $10/hr is miles ahead of a majority of 1/2ers who lose 20/hr(more or less w/e. point is a long term winner even if it is small is going to be miles ahead of someone who is losing long term).

When I say we are miles ahead I'm assuming we're better than the average llsnler just because we are on 2p2 and at least thinking about the game.

I agree with Pony here. The assumption that fish will only play WTF poker with 40-60bb is a fallacy IMO. Fish play really bad with big stacks, medium stacks and short stacks.

If I may illustrate a 200 BB 2/5 effective stack hand I recently played:

Hero $1200
Meh reg $500
Fish Little over $1k

6-7 Limps to Hero in BB who checks option with 55. Flop is 45Jhh. Hero leads 35 into 40ish. Meh reg calls, fish calls (Pot $145ish). Their ranges are essentially A, KJ, few combo draws, virtually never JJ

Turn K Hero leads $125; Meh reg shoves; fish now flats; Hero shoves fish tanks and calls.

River brick and I scoop $2,700 pot. Meh reg has KJ (cooler maybe but limped pot), Fish has J4 sooooted.

Mpethy I respect your opinions so I want to make sure I am understanding this correctly. You are inferring that most LLSNL players are not that much better than the fish as it relates to deep stack play??? I'll go back and read your posts again to make sure I am comprehending properly.

I don't disagree that a lot of regs don't adjust well to deeper stacks and play the same robotic style regardless of stack size. Actually most regs where I play 2/5 aren't particularly good with any stack size but that is a different story.

I'm not sure about this either. Maybe I'm lucky and play in Fantasy land (Charles Town) but the 2/5 games are full of very few competent players. Not sure it is quantifiable but if we hold a 65/35 edge on the fish...maybe more...I'd rather play deep pots with that edge against that fish all day.

Interesting discussion though.

Not making silly mistakes and being awesome deep stack are not one of the same.

Some of us can benefit from deep stack, but most of us are probably better off playing shorter.

Alright I am just being modest, I think I am f-ing awesome.

I still don't think deep is always great.

If you can't beat LLSNL for a decent rate you need to get out of this thread and go work on your game.

Even the "good" players live tend to be terrible below 5/10.

How can you even say that?

How are we ever going to make a big mistake against a fish in a big pot ott or otr?
I mean if we think this is at all possible then:
1). We are probably not very good
and
2). You're right we shouldn't be playing deep stack

Again this is assuming we're better than our competition, if someone at the table is really deep and going to crush us because we have a deep stack, then re-read #1 and #2.

Being good with a deep stack comes from experience. If we just stop playing any time we have a deep stack we're never going to get any experience. By not getting any experience playing deep we are losing money by not stacking fish in gigantor pots.

This is how I analogically explain me playing poker for a living to someone that doesn't understand the game.

Let's say you and I play a game with a 6-sided die. With each roll, we will place a wager. If it hits 1-4, then you win. If 5 or 6 hits, then I win. Theoretically, to make the most profit, you should wager as much as you can affordably lose and roll that die as many times as possible before I stop playing.

The same principle applies to playing deep vs playing short.

Oh I agree, believe me that I do, just that most fish are rarely deep and thus effective is always low and practice is limited.

I don't think we differ in opinions, perhaps the context.

Wow, great post. Playing TAG, it's easy to play relatively mistake-free poker, but with LAG it's easy to make mistakes and spew/tilt away chips.

I am shocked to hear you believe there is no theoretical advantage to playing LAG. I always thought there was an advantage which seemed to be confirmed by my perception of the best players in my room: the best 2/5 player is a LAG, and the best 5/10 players mix their game up between LAG and TAG... and also what i see on TV (thinking that many of the players that crush are LAGs).

Of course, the vast majority of good players are TAGs and most players I have seen try to play LAG at 2/5 have crashed and burned but I still had the view that in order to truly crush one would have to play LAG.

I think mpethy has stated before he thinks there is a theoretical edge that doesn't seem to show up in practice.

Basically, no one plays the edge perfectly enough.

That's exactly it. I am 100% positive the theoretical edge exists, but no one I have ever analyzed who plays lag has ever had a WR that surpasses the max win rates of the best tags.

Put me in the camp where playing a deep stack is better for LLSNL games. I won a $1300 pot at $1/2 a few weeks ago when I got in with a set against AK that had made a K on the flop.

Granted, a lot had to happen in order to make this possible. The fish had to get lucky and hit a flush on the river to acquire that big stack. I had to win some big hands to get my sack that deep. And I had to survive a gutshot draw to win.

But when it happens and you rake in a huge pot, you realize that fish are capable of making huge mistakes and overvaluing their hands and paying you off.

Of course, I cut into my own win-rate by calling raises when I shouldn't have as well.

You see the difference? If you have an edge in your game, you can potentially increase your personal win rate by playing lag compared to playing tag. But unless you surpass the theoretical earn for a tag, you're not really realizing the theoretical edge that a lag has over a tag. If your tag win rate was less than the theoretical maximum, you could also have increased your WR by plugging the leaks in your tag game.

But what if you took one of the world class players and put him/her into the average $2/5 game with $1000 eff stacks. How do you think he/she would do then? Could that theoretical edge be reached?

In other words, is that about us as players or about our opponents as players?

I like to have the fish covered. Sure, the situation where you get to felt them doesn't always come up, but it will never come up if you don't have them covered, rather, you will just double up your shorter stack. The fish you especially want to have covered is the one that will stack off lightly. I can't remember the exact details, but Shane "Noluck17" Rose had a story about some guy who came into the Commerce at either a 5/10 or 10/20 game I believe with $10k and he made sure to cover him and ended up felting him pretty lightly as I recall. Again, he couldn't have done that had he not covered him.

I mean, it's hero and villain dependent obviously. If being so deep is going to cause you to fold a lot and worry about getting felted and not pick up any small pots, that's not good. But, again, I personally like to have fish covered and the more of a fish they are, the more important it becomes. Some whales can't ever fold TPTK or Aces. It's nice to pick up 150bb + stacks when the right hand comes up.

Do any of you see this value?

Lets say you have a 5k bankroll

That's good enough for 20 buy ins of $250 at 1/2.

But, you think you could make a better hourly if you moved up to 2/5, and you don't want to risk buying in full for $500 because you'd then only be at 10 buy ins.

Why not buy in for $250, employ a solid short stack strategy, then bam, you're now up to $500 off a $250 buy in and you're "shot taking" at 2/5 for the same price of one buy in at 1/2....

Limon plays 70bb.....in 5/10+ games! He has said before you should buy in for the max at $5 blind level games. You took that statement out of context.