Join Date: Aug 2014
Posts: 4,027
So I noticed partypoker has this option and i know pokerstars and 888 you can do this as well with the correct software. I know people use it because on partypoker, you start off with such a deep stack. I have never tried it fully because of a few reasons. However, i do like thats much more simple since its bb stack size like 20bb as oppose to say 300000 chips.
1. Do you prefer playing in BB as oppose to chips? For someone who is not that good and quick at math, isn't this really good because you dont have to calculate such as okay bet 3000 chips on flop, then playing around with the chip slider to see how much to bet on turn to get stacks on the river? That to me seems to be a very good benefit of it. Many times i notice when i bet on flop or turn, i notice i have way too much chips left to jam the river. Thus had i bet bigger on earlier streets, i would have now been able to bet pot size river.
Such as blinds are 1000/2000. You have 70000 chips or 35bb. BB has say 60000 chips or 30bb. You raise to say 2x and bb calls. Now there is around 5.5bb so to speak. And there is about 28bb effective. So you could bet 2bb and get called. Pot now is 9.5bb with 24bb effective instead of it being in chips and being longer to calculate especially if you are playing lot of tables. Thus if you want to jam river... you could now say bet 5bb on the turn and size the river to bet a pot size bet of 19bb to put the other player all in.
Do people like it because of this?
2. The issue why i do not use it is because even though this feature would make it very simple to calculate bet sizes and pot odds, isn't the biggest disadvantage when someone bets and its hard to interpret their bet size? Example someone betting 2bb into 5.5bb or betting 15bb into 18bb... as oppose to say someone betting 10000 into 26500? Or 152000 into 183022 chips? Because with the bigger numbers as oppose to stack size, does anyone feel like they could get more reads on someones bet size when its numbers as oppose to stack size? Thus looking at that bet size make you look at it more like value bet or bluff etc?
Of course you have no idea if the other player is playing stack size to bb. So example when they bet very small amounts, they might be just betting the bb as oppose to chips. The only thing that i think of might be... change the stack size of BB back to stack size when you have a tough decision such as a bigger bet? Example when someone bets 15bb into 18bb on the turn or river, sure thats a big bet... but i feel like looking at the actual chips he is betting might give you a clue to it? I think it would feel strange thinking about a decision and instead of looking at my opponent bet 220000 chips into 304000 pot... its 15.2bb into 18bb etc.
Does anyone agree/disagree with this?