Your argument is flawed because you are relying on the premise of "making $50/hr at 2/5 & $100/hr at 5/T while short stacking" being true.

It should be easy to figure that out.

For one, a fixed amount of rake (which is the case in most casinos) is much lower relatively speaking in higher stake than lower.

Second, if you're a skilled player, winning 8bb at 1/3 translates to $24. Winning at 5bb in 2/5 is already higher.

List goes on.

Come on, you can pick up on the exaggeration of what is generally a true statement. Let's save the nitpicking for strategy posts, like me!

Apples and oranges comparison probably. I've not experienced the tough 2/5 games you are talking about. Those lineups sound more like tough 5/10 games to me. If there are 4 other grinders at a table, I'm probably not sitting at the table even if I'm the best player.

RP, shortstacking is great when you can
a)play multiple tables
b)rathole successfully
c)put in a ton of volume

I had a day where I shortstacked PLO600 online last year and made $11k in a day. It was fun, but not something that is analogous for live play.

You seem to confuse me painting something as "bad" when I'm saying it's not optimal. I know how to play a shortstack. I've done it online before and when I started playing live I wasn't confident always buying in for 200+bb as I am now.

You guys realize the bb/100 for shortstackers is much, much less for a reason, right? I haven't looked at stats for about two years now, but generally online the BEST shortstackers were making less then 1/4 bb/100 then a good player buying in for 100bb. This is no different live. Even with the best game selection, $50/hr at 2/5 buying in short just isn't feasible.

I may have understated that. I consider any 2/5 game with more than 2 other winning players to be an undesirable game. The normal makeup for the 5/10 games I play in is 3 good grinders, 3 competent nits, and 3 rec fish/whales. That makeup may vary slightly to something like 4 grinders, 3 nits, and 2 rec fish and that's ok, but I'm certainly not sitting at a table full of winning regs.

You aren't mentioning that you are increasing your variance a ton by playing what you two are describing as an active shortstacking game that is taking advantage of many "good" situations and certainly not a 9/7 game.

I get it and I think most get it as well. Again, no disagreement.

No, I assumed you were saying that it is of lower EV.

I get the obvious reasons, but what are less obvious reasons to why short stacking is bad?

From what you said earlier to be bad, those reasons actually end up being good IMO:

1. You are not threatening.
2. You are definitely not labeled as a good player, because apparently good players never buy in short.

Do these labels matter online?

In live, I would think that if people underestimate my ability because of my image, I can easily take advantage of easy double-ups 50bb a pop.

Think of the flip side.

Would you allow yourself to put in 50bb light pre or flop against a deep and good player? Probably not, because you are concerned of turn and river with a lot of money behind.

I am not because variance is not really something any of us understand anyway.

The one thing I would like to add is that the preflop raising size makes short stacking live better than online. It's not unusual to have 50%+ of your stack in the pot before the action even gets to you, where you can then just shove your premiums or 3bet and jam 99% of flops if the SPR is appropriate. This does not happen online where the standard open is 2-3BB. Live it is 5-7BB depending on the table which means bigger bloated preflop pots which is exactly what a SS wants.

I now am fairly confident that buying in short is the best route, learning the table dynamics whilst playing a robot short stacked strategy, and then topping off in a few orbits when you are comfortable or when you double up. I never will rathole 1/2 anymore because there's almost always a few fish at the table and I see no reason to go shortstack some random nit table when I can just play deeper against a whale. I do think ratholing 2/5 would be profitable, however, if some rooms allowed less than a 40BB buyin. Probably somewhere in the $20-25/hr range would be a goal winrate. Possibly more.

I generally only think buying in short and observing table dynamics is correct if you're not a regular in a room. I think just by observing the types of players/stack sizes you can get a good feel before playing a hand, and if you're a regular you will know most players anyway. Yes, you have the potential for better spots because the raise sizes are bigger, but you're seeing so many fewer hands it doesn't even out in my opinion. Unless you really like squeezing the middle to bottom of your range and getting it in every single time with AJ type hands.
The rest I agree with BM.

RP, you're on this weird tangents with the labeling of players. I'm not "labeling" a player as good or bad solely on what they buy in for, but I also haven't run into any good players who routinely buy in short because it is less optimal. I was mostly exclusively talking about the 2/5 and 5/10 games I play in which are generally 4-5 pros, 2-3 rec players who are decent until either a bottle or a buyin are emptied, and 1-2 whales. Everyone knows everyone, there are no labels to be had.

I'd expect your average winrate to be in the range BM posted if you were to shortstack 2/5, but a good player can definitely make $20 at 1/2 and have 1/3 the STD. Just take a proper shot imo.

No I didn't.

You did post this:

If you don't know any competent deep stack pros buying in short, isn't it true that if a player buys in short, you wouldn't think he's a competent deep stack pro?

So your argument that short stacking is bad is that you have never seen competent deep stack pro buying short, and that you never actually play with anyone that you don't already know?

I don't know how to quantify it but sure you are taking a lot of risks by playing this style. Moreso at 5/10 where players are much more likely to call your ships thus putting you in a lot of 60%/40% 70/30 50/50 spots. You will certainly be in more 80/20 spots than 20/80 but sometimes you will shove into hands that have you crushed but regardless a lot of variance there.

At lower levels though there are a lot of spots where you will simply get folds with the variance being the few times your opponents call you (whether it's because you run into the top of their range or they just don't want to fold for whatever reason).

In absolute terms your variance isn't necessarily much higher for the level you are playing though. You are never gonna lose any big coolers...if you do, losing a 20bb stack really isn't that big of a deal in absolute terms.

At 2/5 $1500 (which I would use as a stop loss) will get you five 60bb buyins or six 50bb buyins or twelve 25bb buyins so if you get stacked 3 times you still have plenty of money to work with. If you get stacked 3 times with a 100bb buyin then you are down $1500. If you have enough buyins you're eventually gonna run hot if you're riding the short stack variance train then you just hit and run

No, I'm saying the pro is being very dumb and/or broke if they're buying in short. In the games I play in, the whales buy in for 200bb. They aren't that good at holdem, and sometimes play PLO where they genuinely don't know how to play. If you are a professional poker player playing 2/5 and a whale who is there to spew $2-5k tonight is sitting with $1k, buying in for $250 is a bad idea for a professional poker player.

My live play is largely in a smaller sized city. We aren't a large poker community, there aren't many tourists and the ratio of pros to bad regs or fish is absolutely terrible, to be honest. I know everyone who is going to sit in these games, yes.

I don't get why we need to buy in short to "wait and observe the table dynamic". We can just play fewer hands or more cautiously. We're giving up the chance to get into an obvious big pot situation by buying in short. Raises in front and AA? Time to win the minimum. Small pp in MP? Goodbye set-mining odds.

Just buy in full and try not to punt off light in the first orbit.

This is a great point Bip

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I agree you are giving up value. I heard this tip from Tommy Angelo on one of Bart hansons podcasts, tried it and have found it suits my game better than buying in full vs unknowns.

Probably because I'm new to poker I just feel more comfortable this way.

Speaking of high variance, this is pretty high varianceif you have one whale dropping $3-5k, that money is not going to be evenly distributed. More than likely 2 or 3 regs will get it all and everyone else will be SOL. Not saying it's a bad game or anything wrong with it but compare that to a table of 8 passive fish each expected to lose between $300 and $1000, which is generally like printing money each and every time.

Where I play you can generally expect double digit 2/5 tables running on the weekend and three to four 5/10+ games running. One of the negatives about playing a deep stacked 2/5 where I play is that in order to change tables you must drop back down to $500. Considering table dynamics change quite a bit this is a major negative. Imagine you are in a game deep stacked $2500+ and the whale leaves...now what? If the whale changes tables and you want to follow him you have to go back down to $500. Ditto if your game gets bad. Contrast with buying in short where you can buy-in for $300, double up, change to a better table, buy-in for $300, double up, change to a better table rinse repeat.

Agree completely from a theoretical standpoint. You are definitely leaving value on the table. That being said, imagine you are a decent winning or breakeven player with leaks. Perhaps you have a weak mental game and just have days where you play bad (or perhaps you just don't know if you are a winning player at a particular table). If that is the case you can buyin short which decreases your risk exposure. After a period of time you can decide that you have confidence that you are playing good poker today and the table dynamics are quite suitable for you to have a winning session so at that point you go ahead and top off your stack.

Umm...what?

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I hear it over and over again, and yet other than the fact that you win more when you win, I haven't read any concrete reasons...

In other words, your sample size of live play is very limited.

http://www.notedpokerauthority.com/a...ild-games.html

but Dickie, the fact that you win more when you win with a deeper stack than with a shorter stack IS the concrete reason.

I just assume that this was given and that we were in search of more...

So 30 posts of whatever are basically worthless?

Yes - that was a worthless non-debate...

As a poker player, I am comfortable adopting theory that I can rationalize yet that comes without concrete evidence...not 100% of those theories will pan out as perfect - but FFS if I obsessed and hesitated over every debatable and marginal hypothesis, I would never buy in, never play a hand, never win.

If I am going to focus on countering common poker wisdom - it sure as hell is not going to be something as marginal in value as "whether short stacking actually costs the player"

Are you trying to say that opportunity cost of your time is higher than mine?

Well, EAD...