Does your training still primarily consist of encouraging people to learn to shortstack? Do you realize how ****ty this makes the games for everyone else?

Hi gregorio,

we are not teaching a short stack strategy to beginners any more.

The reason why we taught short stacking back in the days (as an alternative to starting out with fixed limit or SNGs) was because NL Hold'em can be a tough game for people who have never played poker before and playing with a short stack is very easy to learn. (see also "Getting Started in Hold'em by Ed Miller)

It became problematic when the phenomenon grew to professional levels, i.e. when players becamse really really got at short stacking and used it far beyond the beginner level. Now, this in itself is also not yet a problem, but it becomes a problem when critical mass is reached - as then big stacks are essentially forced to pratically play as if they were short as well.

This is why we are in favour of the changes made by poker sites recently, which have created seperate tables for short stacks and big stacks, allowing fish and sharks alike to choose which game they prefer.

i bet a lot of money pokerstrategy would never shut down their shortstacking learning courses (which ruins the games a lot) if all the big sites wouldn`t have made these changes to buyins. gfto

Our goal is to service two groups of players:
1. Ambitious beginners - for them, short-stacking was a good first step, as it is easier to master than BSS play.
2. Recreational players - short-stacking is an easy strategy for them to feel confident about playing. They won't be winning players, but reduces their churn rate. Historically, this generated a lot of confident long-term recreational players that brought liquidity to the rooms.

We do not just adapt to the recent changes - we like them a lot.
Every recreational player should decide whether he wants to play short stacked or big stacked.

In practice, there are a lot of recreational players who prefer playing short-stacked. You know them from live games. They just feel more confident as shorties. In fact, they even also prefer to play against other shorties, as they feel 'safe' after a double-up [against a big stack, they could lose all their money in the next hand].

These recreational players should have their will. And because of these recreational players, short tables make a lot of sense. Thus, there will always be winning players who play on short tables. Thus, it is part of an all-round poker school to teach also this game.

The decision not to teach beginners to short stack is mainly based on research that shows most recreational players get more fun from playing big-stacked.

Hi Lancelott,

we actually got rid of the short stack strategy for beginners before the poker room changes were introduced.

The reason is quite simple: taking into account that only 30% of our beginners started out with a short stack, we did not anticipate that so many players would continue to play short stacked for such a long time. As a result of that, short stacking in itself became self-defeating as it can't work if there's too many short stacks.

In addition to that, it's rightfully annoying for the big stack players if they are surrounded by short stacks.

Hmmm, this kinda sounds like you admit to fail to educate the players so that they can be winning players with 100bb.

Or to be fair, only 30% of them.

It's not easy to teach someone via a few spreadsheets or videos how to win in todays online poker, but you silently claim to do it.

Whatever, it's like arguing with religious fanatics. You can't ever see things objective, probably not even if you would try.

If you would admit that shortstacking is dumb, ruins the game and you made a fault, it would be ok. But saying "people love shortstacking ... because you see so many, so they obviously love it" or "all the poker rooms have short tables to follow the needs of their customers, they have to be right".
Well, the poker rooms had to react because of the plague you helped to send over the online poker community.
If there would be a buy-in of at least 100bb with forced auto-rebuy, people would just start to play lower levels that better fits their current knowledge, wouldn't be confused about all the different approaches to a hand because everyone at the table plays his own kind of poker.
You say you bring fish to the poker economy because otherwise they would quit poker. I highly doubt that. Some will only appear to donk of 1000$ and never deposit online again. No matter if they did it in 2 weeks, 2 months, with 100bb or with 20bb.

Some will dream of being Moneymaker or Phil Ivey and keep depositing. Would you provide really good content to them, making them break even or winning players, all the rake I pay to feed you would have any sense for me.

Whatever, I hate you for bringing us shortstackers. You won't change my opinion, neither I will yours, so lets grab a chocolate cookie and enjoy it.

Hey wellju,

you need to seperate two things:

1. Short-stacking recreational players
2. Short-stacking winning players

1. is a type of player that is widespread - just go to a live casino and their NL100 games. There is plenty of them. They prefer to play short - and they even like to play against other shorties, because after they doubled up, they feel 'safe' as they could not go broke against a shortie in 1 hand.
These players must be served with tables they can play at. Not servicing recreational players who - in the end - bring all the money would be madness.

2. will always be there if there are short tables. And there would be no problem about that - the problem just came with the game-theoretical advantage they had over big stacked players. PokerStars solved that problem in a good fashion: a fish now can decide which table he likes to play at. Winning players then need to decide which game (structure + opponents) they prefer.


Short-stacking as a strategy for beginners has it's merits as it is easy to understand and use. And many players do not have the patience to learn a more complex Big-stack strategy. With short-stacking as a point of entry, we enabled thousands of recreational players do develop a passion for the game.

Acknowledging the problems that occurred for big stack players (but not for the recreational players, as they did not really care) when too many short-stackers were there, we decided not to promote short-stacking for beginners anymore. This decision was by the way made before the move by poker rooms to seperate short and non-short tables.

Best regards,
Lutz

You're right, we need to separate the player types. Although that's not an excuse.
With your and the poker rooms reactions on the plague of shortstackers, you're only curing the symptoms, not the root of all evil.

From a psychology point of view:

You state that there are recreational players with not much self esteem when it comes to their poker skills, probably because they ran into good regs before and got crushed.
Instead of realizing "wow, some guys really do their homework" and starting to improve their own game, some might just give up poker tho, they just smile inside and say "haha, I can't play, but I can shove into your bb every time" they might stay in the game, but if they didn't react on their first lesson, that they need to work on improving their game, they probably just will shove around until they lose fun because inside they know that the others are better ....
They just lie to them selves.

If they wouldn't have the option to sit down with 20bb, they either would start working on their game, or quitting the game right now. If you don't work on your game in todays online poker, you're pretty much screwed anyways, except you see your bankroll as paying for entertainment and they sit down with 10$ on a table because that's their budget. They don't care that much if the bb would be .10 or .25, they spend 10$ on entertainment for an hour.

Their passion for poker comes with our without shortstacking.

As no one can really prove his point, I might stop to troll your forum -.-

I agree.
And obviously, it would be very bad if the tons of recreational 20bb 'fish' would stop playing online poker because they cannot play with 'low risk' [or how you want to call short-stacking if you don't know how it's called] as they do e.g. at the casino.

This is why you definately need to offer 20+ BB tables. Of course you still should try to make recreational players love playing big-stacked - but this does not happen by forcing them to.

PokerStrategy.com chose to take the route of not offering short-stacking to beginners anymore because our audience splits into two:

1. Most $50 beginners are recreational players (in spe) - and if we teach them some fullstack basics (they are not ambitious enough to follow-up with all the available content / strategies), we increase the chance that they do not just love poker, but love playing bigstacked.

2. A minority of $50 beginners is ambitious and really tries to learn. They now need to go down a little tougher route, but a more sustainable one.

The main reason we stopped teaching short-stacking is group 1: we believe that these tens of thousands of new $50 players every month that are in mainly for the fun will gain a little more fun in the long run (and thus turn out more net deposits for the winners) if they feel good about playing big-stacked.

Btw. @wellju:

I think you assume that on a poker room X, all the 'evil shortstackers' are generated by PokerStrategy.com - and all the evil recreational players by the poker room itself.

I cannot blame you for this assumption, as so many affiliates indeed just focus on winning players. On the one hand, the rather healthy service providers aka DC, Stox, CR etc. - on the other hand, rakeback affiliates that are just here for the quick buck of abusing a market flaw to do some arbitrage trade.

But I can assure you that PokerStrategy.com nowadays creates a ton of rather recreational players who are not a 'threat' to you as a winning player. On the contrary. Our free $50 offer and broad audience (as I said, tens of thousands get the $50 every month) even works as a kind of market maker in countries where poker is not nearly as popular as historically is in the US and maybe UK.

Our view on the differences between types of affiliates can be found here in the forum:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...player-778378/
I'd be glad to hear your (critical) opinion on it!

The real reason PS.com is theaching out sss is because it alows peopel to maximize the rake to the site, simple as that

As a US player, I can accumulate points to use at DC and Cardrunners. They don't see a legality problem. What's with you folks and US players? What legality? It isn't illegal to play in the US.

Hey FutureInsights,

to prevent a in-depth discussion about legal topics I'm not an expert in, I try an anecdotic argumentation:

Billion-dollar companies such as PartyGaming, Bwin, William Hill, Betfair etc. do not accept U.S. poker players.

Wouldn't you agree that there might be legal opinions that argue offering online poker in the U.S. is not 100% legal?

I would love to see poker legalised/regulated in the U.S. - but in the current situation, we listen to the suggestions of our various lawyers and stay out of the U.S..

Best,
Lutz

2+2 also doesn't accept US players on their bonus program.

That's also because of legal advice from our counsel. One of the reasons for this, and there are several others as well, is that since we are such a large site, we become a target for an aggressive district attorney, while if we were a smaller site, it's very possible that our legal advice would be different.

PokerStrategy.com is also a large site. And even though they are located in Europe, perhaps their legal counsel sees it similar to the way our counsel does. So just because some sties, like DC and Cardrunners, do go ahead and accept US players, and are fine in doing so, it doesn't mean that the situation is the same for us at Two Plus Two or for PokerStrategy.com.

Best wishes,
Mason

It seems to me the enormous popularity of nl in general is due to: 1. TV tournaments; 2. Limits on buy-ins introduced by internet poker. Now the benefactors of the nl boom complain about short stackers.

A few years ago Mason wrote an article (it was later included in one of his books) on why no-limit would never be wide spread.

You say you won't teach shortstacking anymore but are going to start to teach siete's mid stack strategy ? how is that ?

If there is a profitable mid-stack strategy, it is a poker schools' job to teach it.
Additionally, we doubt that a mid-stack strategy will have a big mathematical edge over the big stack strategy as it was the case for short stacking.

The important thing is that we encourage beginners to play the game where they have the most fun & the recreational-thinking majority amongst them become regular recreational players. This is why we suggest new starters now to play SNGs & Big Stack play mostly.

sorry wrong thread

You have ruined a poker world. .

I,and EVERY other full stacker,wish the sites would get rid of this plague for good.

GG short stackers...

This is simply not true

@Lennonac:
The vast majority of our tens of thousands of new real money players every month goes through the quiz / free $50 path. There, you cannot select the SSS anymore.

All of the short stack content is still there though....seeing as it serves no purpose anymore perhaps you should just take it off the site?

and yet it is still apart of your teachings so, what you said is false.

I am a member of pokerstrategy, but I refuse to post in your forums and help new players out like I used to beacuse of the pokerstrategy "Employees"

Your "Employees" were directly rude, insulting, childish and unhelpfull.
I complained about these "Employees" and was simply ignored.

Why would anyone want to get involved with such a company?