Do any of you intentionally buy in for really weird buyin amounts on a regular basis? I've noticed on Bovada people will buy into a 100 dollar table with, say, 84.56.

I think it happens too much to just be people buying in with the remainder of their accounts. My inkling is that they intentionally buy in with an odd amount, in order to immediately blend into the table, make it look like they've been there a while.

Thoughts? Have you seen this happen? Have you done it?

If it's not the last of their account balance they're trying to make it look like it. If I see a player sit-down with a strange amount like that I automatically assume they are a weaker player until proven otherwise. It's a good way to have the table think you're a fish right off the bat. My 2 cents.

Haha, brilliant

sick leveling

It's either a fish or someone pretending to be a fish

i do that sometimes but its mainly becuz i have an extra $4.56cents and so i wanna even out my money.

Can someone explain the point of trying to make the table think you're a fish?

Fish don't care if you're a fish, regs already have hands on you, and if you don't they'll figure out you're not a fish within 30 hands when you don't have fishy stats. Unless you're going to start off limp/calling a ton or making light call downs to make it believable, I can't see any benefit from the attempt. Even then it's going to last for two sessions per stake at the most.

Why do I want regs targeting me anyway if I manage to pull off the image with a weaker than usual range?

OP plays on Bovada, tables are anon.

Yea with the anon tables your buyin amount is the first tell your opponents have on you. First impressions are the most lasting. I've read that it takes meeting someone 60 times to change your first impression of them...if that translates to poker in any way you're going to be playing a lot of hands as a possible fish.

Well my first impression of anyone who does it is that they are a savvy person who is doing it to artificially create an impression, because fish just buy in for the default 30 percent of max.

dem mindgames

I mean what advantage do you have if people think you are a fish? like you min3bet bluff? very hard to capitalize on that.

I noticed that if people think you are a complete moron/huge fish it is a lot easier to get paid off in big hands.

This.

buying in short to get people to think you are a fish is a waste of time, unless you plan to play like a fish as well.

Yeah lol I think it is one guy in particular that buys into the 100nl 6 max with 80-something. I have probably seen 5x as many buy-ins at 80 something than in the 70's or 90's. Also, the cents always end in 1-4 or 6-9. Never round numbers lol

^^^ on bovada i mean

The people buying in for 82.5 BB arent pretending to be fish.

The vast majority of winning players will not think of doing this as a strategy.

The vast majority of winning players that did think of doing this as a strategy will realize that any possible edge gained will be erased by the 17.5BB they lose every time they stack.

That leaves you with the reality that 99% of the people that are buying in for 82.5BB are just what they seem to be, fishy or casual players.

Having said all of that, I have players do it HU.

this.

the strategy is laughable at best.

One of my old roommates from when I lived in Vegas played HU cash and did this all the time (for quite a while iirc) and I pointed this out to him. He stopped doing it right away. It's true though, any edge you're gaining is microscopic and you're losing value by buying in short at the same time. So it doesn't make much sense.

Well, I've been noticing it in PLO8, 9-handed where almost all of the money you get is from solid value playing rare starting hands against worse players. Usually the worse players don't have 100 anyway, so you don't lose an edge there. Having 100 means you're risking getting 3/4ed for just as much as you can 3/4 the other good players.

I thought that the idea was: make it look like you've been there a while, so that people don't realize after 10 minutes that you still haven't played a hand, that you're really tight.

For the record, it also used to bug the hell out of me when people in tournaments would bet 187.69 or something like that, making their bets look absolutely ridiculous. But now the slider pretty regularly results in oddish bet amounts. (Iirc it used to be that to get an odd amount, you had to manually type it in.)