Am I correct in thinking that when playing LAG against nits, it is better to be short stacked (50BB) rather than have a 100BB+ stack?

Most of my winnings will come from the fold equity, which does not demand a huge stack. 50BB will allow me for a 3-4BB preflop raise, plus possible bluff bets of 50-75% on all three streets if needed. Or a 3bet preflop and 2 bluff bets after the flop.

My aggression against the villain when he has a monster will be much more often than his aggression against me when I have one. So limiting my stack will help me reduce my showdown losses.

Is this a correct line of thinking, or am I missing something important?

Buy in full.

It's not better, it shouldn't make a difference because you should only lose stacks to a nit via a cooler and coolers should even out.

It depends whether or not you are a better ss-er than fullstack. ss-ing is bigger than just an anti-nit device, it affects your whole game.

ss-ing gets a lot of hate round here, you can form a legitimate strategy with less than 100bb. Up to you how you play poker champ.

But not without being a scumbag ratholer you can't.

SS-ers don't have to rathole. Regardless, they don't bother me because they tend to be terrible and therefore donators.

U gonna stack the guy anyway .. Then you'll have a full stack

So y waste time w shorty stack

I play zoom, so I see no ethical reason against ratholing - the chances of me playing for stacks against the same villain several times are miniscule.

Ahhhhh


Zoom


Pokers crystal meth

There are no ethical issues in ratholing online IMO, it can be irritating to see some giant fish running off with what was your stack but you're playing against a pool of fish, not one guy.

I rathole if I'm playing a game where I'm not comfortable deepstacking. I don't do it a lot now but I used to rathole all over because I was less confident in my game.

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I will reduce my stack for a while until I get comfortable with the new playing style (in particular, get a better idea of my fold equity), then try going back to full stack.

The issue with ratholing is it allows SS to retain their inherent edge.

But they don't have an edge if you can play their stacksize as effectively as they can.

You want a full/deep stack to play hands like suited connectors and small pairs to crack their big hands

They do mathematically if there are non-short stacks at the table.

This is very true, classic nits play their very strong range hard postflop, so speculative hands gain in value against them, but doesn't work so well 50bb deep.

Is there any good read about this?

As I see it, if I am playing against a ratholer, my effective stack is as short as his, so I am "effectively" ratholing as well. Where does his edge come from?

If you're in a HU pot then yeah that's the effective stack. It can put you in really awkward situations with other people who are still 100bb deep though where you won't really know what to do unless you've studied it a lot which I imagine very few people have.

please don't bring this garbage into every thread discussing playing with <100bb's

I have a strong opinion on the subject

I don't see why it bothers you so much though.

More or less this. Nits are notoriously difficult to get money from. Speaking for myself, true nits are pretty much non-players to me. They are never in a hand unless strong which means they are in a hand less than 2% of the time.

and why should I formulate a strategy specifically against a tight player who is in a hand less than 2% of the time and thus if he is in a hand I better be near nutted to continue.

*shrug*

Nits are so freaking easy to play against. In fact, I find it hilarious that players have such a problem playing against nits.

I'm in the CO with QQ, nit is in EP, he limps, 2 other players limp, I raise to 5bb, nit limp/reraises to 20bb, action gets back to me, Hero????

snap fold unless I'm deep enough to set mine my QQ. For the sake of argument, lets say we are both 250bb deep and I flat his 3-bet.

Flop(40bb) 3 8 9 r
nit bets 35bb, Hero???? snap fold

I'm in the SB with QQ, nit is in the CO. 4 limpers to him, nit raises to 9bb, Hero??? If I'm deep enough to set mine 140bb+ then I can call to set mine, otherwise if I"m at 100bb I just fold.

What? How could you fold QQ to a raise? Easy, it was a freaking nit that raised.

What I find is the real problem is most players incorrectly and inaccurately use the phrase "nit" to describe players, so much so that the word has now lost all meaning.

But a true nit is a super tight player that plays the epitome of results oriented poker. Their raising range is exclusively JJ-AA, and they will "sometimes" raise with AKs but more often than not they will actually limp AK because they don't consider it a real made hand.

Come flop they will blast the pot with such an insane overbet because of being pathologically afraid of getting cracked... So a nit is never getting it in light, they always get the money in with TPTK or an overpair or better. Overall, this will be the case less than 2% of the time which means you are almost always correct to fold to them.

So how is this hard?

What I find is hard is players just aren't disciplined enough to fold TPGK or overpairs to nits.

What I see all the time is a player has JJ or QQ, a nit raises preflop, said player calls.

Board runs out: 8 4 9 2 4 rainbow.

Nits blasts the pot each street, player calls down, nit turns over KK/AA and the player sigh shows his QQ and says, "Well, I had to call..."

No. No you didn't. The villain was a nit with a range that is exclusively JJ+ and JJ is being generous.

The other nonsense I hear is some player saying, "Well, he could have had AK there..." No. No he wouldn't because he's a nit and that is not how nits play...

Anyways, sorry to rant. But for the life of me this is one of my pet peeves, the incorrect usage of the term nit as well as not knowing how to adjust to the easiest player type to adjust to.