It’s weird in Foxwoods and Mohegan you can pull all these shenanigans and they allow cash to play at the table and you can pretty much go north at any time....

And yet at the CT casinos if you try to vlog they kick you out of casino and put strikes on your YT

I’m an online player so the thought of not knowing my stack size down to the last dollar bothers me... and why I’m always asking players how many bills or chips behind bc that also irks me.

The entire notion of hiding your chips is an angle in and of itself... and sometimes it’s legit breaking the rules depending on interpretation.

I'm very much against bills at the table. Utterly impossible to tell how many bills someone has unless they have them fanned out, but most times they're neatly stacked or hidden behind someone's stack.

Major derail of the OP going on here ..

I think it's two separate issues for a Player ..
1) You should always know what's in your stack and approximately what's in other stacks. Bet sizing should always take into consideration the effective stack and beyond in order to achieve maximum value per spot. There is no doubt that you should play a short stack differently than a deep stack given the same factors across the rest of the hand.

2) How your brain works during various stages of your session as well as when your stack is short or built up needs to be a priority to a serious Player.

'Obviously' each hand of poker should stand on it's own merit. While you can use 'data' accumulated during this session to assist in your decision making a Player should never consider the results of previous hands when ultimately deciding what action to take .. i.e., running hot/cold or 'hot' seat or similar.

I think it's 'very human' to consider how each session is going and ultimately let it creep into some of our decision making. Given the same 4x stack size Players do play differently if it's 3x profit or just them recovering previous lost BIs for that session. The less a Player thinks this way the more solid their approach will be to each hand IMO.

Things/flaws that I'm aware of (and accept) but aren't necessarily the best way to go about poker business ..
A) Don't give 'marginal' action to Players who wont give it back and when you typically win zero additional chips when you hit
B) Don't give action to cash-n-dash Players
C) Don't give action to Players who are near the end of their session/waiting for a table change
4) Don't allow 'session stats' to affect poker decisions
5) 'Automatically' play 'tournament cash' and give short stacks action with the bottom of your range .. just because
6) Don't stay in a session after you start to 'protect' your stack for monetary reasons and not poker reasons

After reading this list you might say .. "Who's left to play against?" And I say everyone! These issue typically cause Players to narrow their range when applicable, not preclude them from playing 'all' hands. If you're aware of what's going on, then you can still continue your session, but you may just not be open to all your 'normal' value spots for the type of game you play.

In retrospect Item A is really just good range adjustment against those types of Players. You might be 'auto' play JJ against certain Players but you fold it face up against the Nits, so to speak. GL

I very much liked and agreed with everything you said in your last post, except that the part quoted above is too easily misunderstood. The human mind, by default, predicts the future by interpreting the past. That's just how we learn - it's normal.

So, in a session, when running cold, a common way to stay even is to steal a few small pots here and there. Now, it does take both observation and judgment to know when the move is likely to succeed, however, a major factor is playing off the other players' perception that you're a tighter player than you actually are.

Another example where a hand doesn't stand on its own would be immediately after losing a big pot, especially if you just reloaded and now have a monster. The other players are going to be far more likely to think you're tilting and think they smell blood in the water.

In short, context and perception is important and should be taken into account when playing a hand. Therefore, each hand does not completely stand on its own merit, but should be played according to both its own merit and the context in which it is happening.

There is a huge benefit to knowing how much I am up or down. It is another way for me to evaluate the strength of the table.

Its true that when I win or lose a huge pot that affects everything. So in those cases how much I am up or down is determined by variance (or if I got it in good by not getting sucked out on). But there are many times that the size of my stack reinforces my understanding of the table. And it can change the way I approach things (I may get tighter, more aggressive, or sometimes less aggressive).

When I am short stacked in a cash game I will often straddle and play like I am in a tournament.

The other key thing for me is how much I am down in a session. At some point (usually 2.3 buy-ins or more) I will likely be on tilt. I will force myself to quit at that point. There are times I don't know I am on tilt and there are other times that I justify continuing to play anyway. But if I have a Stop Loss point then I will walk away.

Another thing that comes up frequently is when I am up after playing 8 to 10 hours. If my stack starts going down it can often be a result of new (better) players having come in and some bad players having left. Which is often a signal that it is time for me to go.

This is the key issue though.

Knowing the effective stack size is critical especially in tournaments where the stack sizes can vary significantly. Sometimes in a cash game somebody will buy in for the minimum or get knocked down to a small stack and not put more money in. That changes the strategy for me significantly.

When I am below the maximum buy in at a cash game I will add cash/chips to the table when I am on the button so that I will be back up to the maximum again in the best position possible.

I usually have a rough idea, but I get it exact if I expect to GII against a player. At that point I want to know how much we could be playing for, because it affects everything.

I was at the AC Trop years ago and some guy was trying to annoy me by repeatedly asking for my stack size, as in he asked pre, post, turn, and river each time we were heads up. I don't remember what I did to PO him, but whatever it was, it had worked.



Admittedly, this was an AH move on my part, but the next time he asked, I mashed my stacks and told him I didn't know. The dealer made me restack. He said it is a room rule that my chips must be get in stacks of some sort. Later the floor confirmed and told me I should have asked for him and he would have warned the other player to stop slowing the game down.

Yea. Not only do I know roughly how much is in my stack but I also know how much is in everyone’s at the table.. vital, vital info to have is to see if someone is stuck or up when making a big decision.

There's a guy I've sat with a few times that lines up the edge spots on his chips and rotates them every 5 in the stack. When he has more than few stacks of 20 going it's beautiful to look at but has to be the most OCD thing I've ever seen at a poker table.

There are a few types of players that do this. Generally, these players are tighter than average by a wide margin. This is because they need a lot of time to arrange the chips. Also, they are going to be less observant as it requires more than a little focus to make it look good.

I used to do it. And I’m far from a nit. I did it as something to do at the table that wasn’t staring at an iPad

This is a good generalization without reads imo. The guy in question has like a 40% vpip though so he's definitely the exception.

My generalization would still apply to you then. Perhaps not the tighter part, but defiantly the less observant part. By not watching your opponents when not in a hand, you're passing up opportunities. After all, the game is all about finding spots to win more, or lose less.

I have a friend who used to get black out drunk every time he played, but he was a good player even blacked out. Consequence of black out was he never consciously knew what he was in for or how much he made until he woke up the next morning. Drunk him was very good about putting all of his cash in his sock drawer before passing out.

So there's that strategy.