I am speaking of the room I work in. The rake is the same for every game. The 4/8 will max out more often than the 1/2. Lot's of $1 or $2 drops on 1/2 tables.

{quote]I'm not following this line of thinking. Since most $1-$2 NL hands are not players being all-in and even when they are they are often at max rake anyway ..... I'm not sure why you conclude that more chips in players stacks is necessarily going to mean that bigger pots. While bigger stacks may encourage bigger pots remeber that once max rake is made bigger pots don't make bigger rake anyway.[?quote]

Again here, I am using my room as the test subject. If the pots get bigger, then the rake gets reached more ften. Of course, just raising the buy ins will not automatially make the pots get bigger but I think they might, possibly.

But the room I work in is more concerned about dealing games to the same players next year and 5 years from now. If they all go broke early in the month, they will stop coming to play.

WTF partners dumping chips to each other to build a bigger stack in a capped buy-in cash game ?? You understand we are talking cash games and table stakes, correct? I sure would like to hear an example where you think this is going on. It really doesn't make any sense.

If you have partners playing in your game you have way more problems than being able to buy a bigger stack. If your game is that crooked, buy in shorter... I suggest $0.

If they must have a cap, I agree a match the biggest stack (or 75% of the stack) is a good additional rule, but perhaps for different reasons. It can be very frustrating to get stacked with 2-3 caps in a hand, and have really no chance of getting even anytime soon, or covering the villain that you really would like to stack in return.

of course if you are worried about dumping chips to build a big stack .... I imagine you may see chip dumping in a 75% cap game to build bigger stacks. Now when I dump off to my buddy (who will repay me later) I can buy in for even more money...... in this way a couple of players can manipulate the game to make it a bigger buy in game.....

You do realize that the term "action" means more people playing more hands don't you?

Even though having a bigger stack literally does not affect the way you or anyone else should play from a game theory perspective due to the effective stacks rule, the responses in this thread prove that having a big stack gives you a HUGE psychological edge which in turn translates to more $$$ because idiots fold more often to bigger stacks.

I see this happen all the time in LA games where the buyin is capped at like 20bb or 33bb until you reach 2/5NL, which then becomes a 60bb cap. If one person has 100bb or more (LA definition of "deepstacked") he can bully the table and the 20bb stacks keep folding to him. In fact sometimes if someone has way more than the rest of the table people start leaving. It sounds ridiculous but having a big stack really is a huge edge in these low limit games because of how ******ed the players are.

What room do you deal at? I would love to play there sometime. LA cardrooms just **** the players up front by automatically taking max rake out of every hand that sees a flop in addition to capping the buyin for 20 or 33bb.

Yes, a super deep stacked NL game is much slower than an average stacked game.

I don't see any difference in Tunica.

Yea...would be terrible if he raised to $2,000 and you had to fold because you didn't have the $2,000 in front of you to call the bet. :-(

I guess without caps Bill Gates wins every hand!

I moved PrimogenitoX's challenge here so we can keep this thread on-topic:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...4rollz-931214/

I think a lot of people ITT forget that not everyone playing poker is a 2p2 poster who understands poker at a fairly decent (or higher) level.

There are a LOT of people out there who stink at poker. But they like to play. And to a casino, a full table of donks is no different than a full table of sharks, except that a full table of donks may bust earlier...but if both tables end up playing for 5 hours as full tables, with similar # of hands, it's all the same to the casino.

So the casino puts buy-in caps so donk/fish A doesn't put down his entire stack for the night, lose it in one hand, and then go home. That's bad for the casino. They cater to the donks just as much as the "sharks" because what matters to them is rake.

Also, even though it's NOT an advantage to have a massively huge stack in comparison to everyone else, many (bad players) people THINK it's an advantage. I've seen many "big stacks" at the 2/5 game (built up over hours of playing), and there are a LOT of bad players who think that the big stack has some sort of advantage in regards to bullying. It's usually the same players who "want to play real poker" and get mad when someone is being very aggro - you know the types. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy too, as the normal stack, who is a bad player, lets himself be bullied by the big stack as he believes that is the normal style of play.

A buy-in cap prevents the sharks from abusing that ability straight from the get-go. I have no problem with that.

Also, some states I believe have laws that dictate max buy-ins.

Personally, I think the most important rule is a max buy-in, but also with a "You can match 75% of whatever stack is in play" rule. That to me is huge.

I don't mind caps as long as the casino also has the 75 percent rule but mist don't.

Action. Players want to play where they see action.

All games at Beau Rivage are uncapped, and have been so since we opened. We do a $6 per 1/2 hour time drop and uncap the games. 1-2NL plays really big here. Min Buy is $100, and the possibility of turning $100 into $5K exists. But ya gotta run realllllllllly good!

One thing about Winstar, I wish they'd raise the buy-in for 1/2... even to 300? Isn't that standard in a lot of places in Vegas?

Without a cap the bad players (who fuel the games) get bludgeoned quickly- unless they run like the sun- and the games dry up. Mistakes are magnified as stacks increase...

I'd like to see that as well, you have to run hot to start and/or bring in a handful of buy-ins to get through the short term variance at the short stack 1/2, you basically have to play the Ed Miller 1/3rd stack shove threshold. I would like it if the cap was raised to $300 or $400 at 1/2 and to like $700 or up to $1000 on the 2/5, with deeper stacks the games would slow down a little, but I think more tables would fill up. Or maybe just have 2 different games, (buy-ins & caps) at each level.

Tex why would you necessarily want to match the stack of the deep stack player if they are good? Only reason I can see matching the biggest stack is if they are a huge huge fish, where then matching the stack is fine. I'd be buying in for how much the fish I want to bust has. No need to buy in for what the player that has an edge against you has, it is just going to complicate the matter, unless you have an edge against everyone at the table.

Buying in less than the deep stack guy gives them less room to bully you, as they have to fear you going all in where if your deep they can put a ton of pressure on you.

Because if I catch a good had I want all his chips not just part of them and it prevents the big stack for being table bully.

LOL. You still haven't answered how someone having much more chips than you affects your actions in any way. Cash games aren't a tournament.

That is the thing. How often are you going to catch a good hand that they will catch a 2nd best hand to pay off 300+ bb's deep if there not a huge fish. Not very often. Especially if they have position on you 300+ bb deep and playing very aggro, your going to lose a ton of small/medium pots to being put in tremendous pressure where your just giving up too much of a huge edge if you don't nit it up. And they can't bully someone with 100bb effective stack too much, that is such a misconception. And obviously your goal so be picking on the fish and staying out of the way of the real good players, should be playing to make money not get into a battle with a solid reg when you don't need to.

I rarely play cash when I travel as I travel for tourneys 6-7 circuits a year and when I am at home in Tunica I am the solid regular and the rooms I play in here have no cap.

the point is that if he has a big stack then he has to play differently against me if I match his stack then if I play shortstacked. When i bet, he has to consider that down the road I might put him to a decision for all his chips ..... but if I play with substantially less chips in front of me then he has different considerations -- such as whether he can get me off of a hand becaus eI am shortstacked.

Clearly stack sizes are relevant to strategy determinations. We may play different styles and prefer different circumstances ... but you can't ignore the fact that stack size is an issue that affects the play fo the hand.

Been playing poker for a long time and never have I seen people come into a game which is capped wich is 90% of casinos and dump chips, this might happen in bigger games like 10-20 NL but I dont play that high and its rare for that game in this country according to all the other casino threads.

Where I play in Tunica the games are not capped.

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, I missed this thread first time around and didn't get a chance to read all of it.

In my mind, a benefit of buy in caps is to place like-minded players into the same game. By like-minded, I mean players that share the same (or close to the same) aversion to risk, and view the value of a dollar in close to the same light.

I suppose this may fall under sustainability of games for the house, but players need to feel comfortable in the game they're in, or they'll stop playing. We all know that having a guy buyin for 2k and shove every hand to win a tourists $50 isn't going to keep the that player coming back, because they don't feel that it's a level playing field.

If that player stops playing, the room suffers and the players suffer also. We need to grow poker by making it comfortable, otherwise games dry up for everyone.