Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffmray
is 50BB stacks short stack poker?
In my limited understanding so far, I would say that what "short stack poker" really means is that it's a 2-street game - meaning you raise enough before the flop that on the flop you really have only two options - shove or fold.
50bb is typically too high for that. If you raise to, for example, 6bb and get 2 callers, there are only 18bb in the pot on the flop and you have 44bb behind. 44bb would be a MASSIVE overbet there. If you have only 30bb in your stack, then your overbet flop shove is only 24bb, which is still a little high but not ridiculously so.
Having said THAT, there are a lot of tables where your preflop raises will FREQUENTLY get 4 or 5 callers. In those cases, there will be 30 to 36bb in the pot, so your 44bb overbet shove (starting with a 50bb stack) is not quite so ridiculous.
Of course, if your 6bb raise will get 4 or 5 callers you might as well raise to, say, 8bb or 10bb, and then even 2 or 3 callers sets you up so that your flop overbet shove is not so ridiculous.
Lastly, keep in mind that if you sit down with 50bb and wait for AA-JJ/AK-type hands, you'll probably do nothing but fold for 4 or 5 entire orbits, so your 50bb will dwindle down a bit for you.
Essentially, it's about decisions. The worse a player you are the fewer decisions you want to make and the easier you want those decisions to be. If you're the best player at the table you want the deepest stack at the table because you want everybody to make 4 or 5 decisions per hand, knowing you will make better decisions than they do.
Was that a little more information than what you were looking for?