Two things. Yes, downswings like this are pretty standard. For reference in my first 1000 hours of 1|2 I had 2 $2k downswings and one $3k downswing, but I still came out up $20k. Worse than normal play definitely contributed to the $3 downswing, but so think the others were normal for my skill level at the time.

The second thing is that it is more likely that you are losing due to inexperience and poor play than due to a downswing, simply due to the fact that you have a very small sample and already had a downswings like that. Either way you should just keep working on your game and keep playing the best poker you can and it should all work out. 1/2 is not hard to beat.

Poker community has such fetishes around being deep stacked.

You mean it doesn't arouse you?

It arouses me when some really bad vegas regs who sits with 40 stacks of small denom chips slowly wittle down over the night, but still somehow has 800bbs left, only to lose it all in one hand to a short stack who had built their stack up to match the 800 partially through him, in a hand which this bad reg would tell everyone is a ridiculous cooler, but actually isn't.


But in all seriously, no. I am "aroused" by big hourlies, and that may or may not involve big pots and deep stacks. What I know is that people use deep stacks leading to big hourlies as a way to justify their ego's need to have a big stack, when they are just too bad and ignorant about poker and short vs deep stack edges and strategies to actually have any accurate judgement on such decisions.

Nobody knows how to play short stacks well because nobody wants to learn it, since it's so uncool. As a result, only fish do it, and as a result, we're accustomed to seeing poor results linked with short stacked.

Look at some of the biggest winners online in the toughest games, though, and you will see consistent short stackers. Some of these will be playing and not topping up even if their stack gets down to 6bbs, because the shorter they are the bigger their mathematical edge, which in those games matter more.

Of course in live games usually deeper is better, but things like tilt and bank roll concerns are also huge factors and live poker players are notoriously naive in how they deal with tilt, variance, and going busto, but, no, the ego of not being seen as a short stacker means they'd rather play 250bbs deep when they only have a 1500bb roll than sit with 50bbs, especially when 50bbs is much easier to guarantee a positive winrate if you have any kind of weakness strategically or tilt-wise. The shorter you are, the more immune you are to tilt or "brain fart" later street deep stacked spew if you know basic preflop strategy.

Yabbut you only have the short-stack advantage until you double or triple up. Then you have to either pick up or play deeper-stack poker.

Yeah what's wrong with that? That would be no different than if you bought in for that amount. It's an independent event, except when you first bought in, you have the option to buy for less, and in the latter, you're not allowed to have less, so you either take what option is offered to you, or you quit.

And honestly, if somehow you have a magical session where you run up your stack and have 25%+ of your roll in play or something, and that's a life changing amount of money, and the game is a combination of not amazing and aggro and making you play subpar, then leaving is certainly an option.

You want to eventually become the kind of player who can stay playing good games, or even just average games even if you're deep, but the first part of becoming a good player is knowing your strengths and limitations.

It’s more like the last part, far easier said than done.

Right, and I would argue that it's linked with not buying into groupthink about things like how good players always have to buyin at least 100bbs or deep or cover the fish, regardless of the situation. It involves chipping away at your ego, or at least recognising why you do a thing, and how much of your arguments for it is actually logic or just rationalising.

As an example, my friend with a <100k roll sat at a very juicy and loose preflop 10/25/50/100 NL game where the minbuyin is 1k, and he gave himself a stoploss of 15k and decided to play 3 bullets of 5k instead of 15 bullets of 1k, or at least 6 bullets of 2.5k. That is an absurd decision for a long time pro and smart player to make.

Yeah your 5k bullets give you higher hourly than the 1k bullets, but the game runs for 5-8 hours, and he's very likely to go broke in the first 4 hours at 5k a buyin, and his hourly is clearly not that much higher than if he say at 1k, so his average winrate is much lower since a good chunk of the time he doesn't get to play and expose his edge for the full duration of the game.

live nosebleed =/= typical LLSNL game =/= tough online games

just sayin...

Took me a *long* time (about 3300 hours == 7 years of recreational live play) to realize a lot of the benefits regarding playing shorterstacked that Sol is mentioning. Especially with regards to ego and mainly finally becoming comfortable enough with myself to being able to own where my personal wheelhouse / comfort level is. Plus also identifying that 100bbs in a loose LLSNL game where a standard raise is ~7x is actually a fairly shortstack game to begin with.

I'm going to reach 1000 hours of my new Super Nit method (which employs playing with a 66bb stack instead of a 100bb stack) this Sunday, so I'll hopefully be posting some giraffes next week. So far not overly impressive, but better than I had been doing leading up to it, better than I thought it would be, and has a bunch of promise (depending on how you interpret the giraffe).

GrecentshorterstackedconvertG

Can someone explain why it's mathematically correct to play with 60 bbs and not 100? I know that if you buy in for say 1k at a 5/10 and there's people sitting on 5k playing garbage hands and justifying playing them cause they're deep then yeah. But what is the difference between 60 and 100?

It's funny how you guys are talking about this. Bumped into a former Swedish pro poker player at Planet Hollywood. Was very surprised how he never topped up even when his stack dipped below 100 bbs (and the max buy in for 1/2 there is 150 bbs). If the math is right then it kinda makes sense but...probably not still at 1/2 cause players are so bad and just aren't gonna put you in tricky spots deep? Kinda confused.

@ Rat

If you look at my posts from early on, most of them started with "top up to 100bbs". Then I eventually slightly amended it to "if you feel you've got a big advantage over the table top up to 100bbs". Now I don't take a line on this at all, and basically do what you want. I still feel I have a slight advantage over the field when deep, so I'm not totally opposed to playing deep (which I'll be forced to do as my stack grows). However, I feel I have a *massive* advantage on the field playing short (taking advantage of my opponents major two leaks preflop with shortstacks, which are being way too aggressive and way too loose).

My evolution went as follows. Years ago, games were awesome. Flop a set from any position in a multiway limped pot (which most of them were) where someone has flopped TP in an SPR 20 pot? Awesome, you get the stack. So sitting on 100bbs made a lotta sense to take advantage of these spots. But as the games got tougher, this doesn't happen as much (it still happens from time to time, sure, but just not nearly as much). So now sitting on 100bb for IO purposes with your speculative hands doesn't really matter as much. And meanwhile playing TP hands is kinda difficult at 100bbs, especially with regards to setting up easy peasy SPRs, especially if some players can make your life difficult. So, if the IO aren't nearly as good as they once were, and playing TP hands is difficult, why not just move down to a 66bb stack, where playing TP hands is fairly trivial. You can still get the benefits of both worlds: easy peasy TP play, while still sometimes getting into ok IO spot with speculative hands in LP for cheap (which, over time, is likely the only place they are now really profitable anyways).

But that's just how I look at it, and many will disagree.

Gplayyourgame,imoG

As you likely know these higher stakes games have all kinds of on-and-off-table dynamics in play particularly when they (often) revolve around a single spot. Now, besides fading risk of ruin, I get that there can be other reasons for an uber-self-aware player not to cover the spot/buy in short. In a vacuum though, I do still see it as a disadvantage to only be able to take bites at the spot while your opponents can take it all in one hand (which in 4 blind games is often what happens). Of course, we don't live in a vacuum, and beyond your own reasons for 1-3k bullets, your 'short' stack actually might have a seriously negative impact on how the spot plays/plays back at you, especially if dealing with an action-whale who likely thrives/is playing the game to leverage his wealth and find pain points in his pro opponents. Even deeper than that, when the unicorn is in the game, (a game that was likely not a random event), it certainly is not going to be good for the health/life of the game itself when you sit down with 10 blacks, the whale notices, the pros notice, and you're now a borderline empty chair if you're not adding to the life of the party and just sitting there, waiting, jamming, reloading, waiting...

FWIW, I have a friend who buys in for 40BB at 2|5 and table changes when he doubles up so he almost never ends up playing full stacked (the room lets you come down when you table change). He is winning $40/h over a few thousand hours and his graph looks like it was drawn with a ruler.

In case it’s not clear I never suggested it’s not usually best to be deep if you’re a good player who can afford it.

Most of you aren’t though (nor are lots of people who think they are), and would be better off being closer to a 40 dollar hourly with a line drawn with a ruler, or at least start from there, get good at basic first, before you start getting involved in spots you can’t begin to understand because you literally do not have the tools for it.

Also, if you’re not able to get stacked for a 800bb pot and then rebuy for 40bbs or whatever your usual buyin is, and play well, then you’re not professional enough.

I always find it hilarious when pros start rebuying in deeper and deeper because they’re tilted. They justify it by saying the game is good, but everyone including themselves know if they just joined the table they wouldn’t have pulled up.

Thing is everyone knows it’s tilt, but live players are lazy undisciplined fools, so they just wave it away and say it’s standard.


Bottom line is, good short stack strategy is literally unbeatable, so considering how so many of you can barely beat the game, maybe don’t laugh at it. If it’s good enough for millionaire regs on pokerstars, it’s probably good enough for you.

Good short stackers are also terrible for the game. Whales won’t have any fun and will never suck out in a big pot against them. Putting nasty beats on “pros” then seeing them whine and tilt afterwards is half the reason I still play.

There's no rule saying that what's best for the individual is also what's best for the game.

There's definitely a hint of some tragedy of the commons dynamic going on in poker in regards to short stacking.

How much you want to abuse that is up to you. Personally, I think starting a table around 60-70bb is great until you get a feel for the game. Then feel free to play deeper, whether by doubling up through someone or by topping up. But I'm a rec player so what do I know.

Actually good deep stack players are terrible for the game. A good deep stack player will wipe out rec players and whales much faster than any good short stacker will. When the bad players get busted deep over and over and then stop coming back, the games suck.

I don't know if a 1000bb rock reg who just wakes up with the nuts is good for the game either. At least a short stacking will give light action sometimes and get in some all in pots. All antisocial behavior is bad for the game, but acting like those vegas nit regs who just waits to stack a tourist are better than short stackers inherently seems way off.

Anyone can be social or anti social, and you can be fun for the game as a short stacker and have a good time, chat with people, get involved in pots, and so on so forth. Lots of people including fish enjoy the dynamic of playing big stacks and also small stacks, sometimes they say things like "oof I knew you were gonna do it, alright let's see if I can pay you off" when you ship over someone's raise, or if they flat and get squeezed, even if in theory you're like, hurting their EV (as if being super deep in position to them doesn't also hurt their EV lol) so to act like fish and whale never enjoy this dynamic seems ignorant at best.

Also 60bbs is more than enough to create meaningful pots for fish to enjoy in.

I guess I'm used to the LA no max games where, for the most part, it isn't always nuts vs near nuts when 200+bb each goes in.

Yeah, again, most of the time deeper is better, just saying people shouldn't treat it as gospel, and most certainly shouldn't make decisions around it based on ego, as I believe many do. There are a lot of variables.

Short stacking online has more incentive due to rakeback and lower rake in the actual games.

In live games it can work, too. Hint: straddle pots makes your 100bb stack into a 50bb stack, and if you haven't already sat with an equity calculator and figured out ranges for common spots to jam in straddle pots preflop, then you're doing it wrong.

But a lot of live players don't think in terms of bb they think in terms of $. So they're not gonna stack off as light as they should cause the effective stacks are halved.

So I told myself I wouldn’t ever post anything about bad beats, but here goes

So I started playing live poker Jan ‘18 with $50, and by sept I had turned that into $9.5k playing LAG, I had never had a losing month. Currently I’m up 9bb/hr all time at 1/2

I had a few changes and the money started to mean more, and haven’t had a winning month since, I’m down 4k, I’ve took some sick beats lost effectively 2k flopped boat vs flopped quads. I’m basically just losing every large pot I play (last night I lost an 800 pot set over set)

It’s just never ending, obviously I’m making some huge mistakes. How the **** do I get out of this downward spiral?

Thanks for any advice, this is maddening.