So I was reading "Crushing the Microstakes" by Blackrain79, looking to improve my skills at NL2, and also watching some videos, reading some guides here or even watching JaimeStaples on twitch playing tountaments deciding to fold or call depending on the next player's stack (when it's really small, like it's a bad thing) and I've noticed they often mention the stack size of the other players, saying sometimes it's no worth to c-bet or even raise a good hand when you have someone short-stacked next to you.

Is it because you want them to fold/put their whole stack in risk before showdown and avoid giving an easy All-In for them? Or what's the advantage for them to have a short stack even if you have a good hand.

Or maybe I just dont get what they are trying to explain, could someone help me here

The size of the effective stack (effective stack = the stack size of the smallest stack involved in the hand) is absolutely fundamental in NLHE and that is why so often the first question a BQ reg will ask is "what are the stacks?".

Stack sizes alter the play-ability of starting hands. Taking an obvious and easy example...22. If you want to set mine 22 (fit or fold post flop) you'd need a deep enough effective stack to make that profitable. In a single raised pot that will be somewhere around 100bb and in a 3bet pot closer to 200bb. (these figures a re just rough approximations to demonstrate the theory). If you were really short in a tourney (say 12 bb) you's either be shoving 22 pre, or folding it.

I'm only really scratching the sides here...the real point is if you don't understand why stack sizes are so crucial you probably don't understand NLHE theory at all.

Any basic (good) primer will cover it. Professional No Limit Holdem by Mehta, Flynn and Miller has one of the best explanations of Stack sizes and SPR for cash (although it is dated now and more suited to live play than online)

extreme sample to underline the principle.

1/2 nlhe.

hero is on bb and covers sb.
A) folds to sb who raises to 20 leaving 30 behind.

B) folds to sb who raises to 20 leaving 800 behind.

in A hero is pretty much limited to play premium hands as sb has so little to behind.
in B hero still has an option to call and see the flop wit speculative hands in addition to just playing premium hands as hero has a chance of potential money won on later street balances out the -ev of pf call.

say... as a bb with 22 or 33. standard.. I would not play in A, but I would consider playing in B

hope this point you in right direction..

Risk vs Reward.

Think of every hand as an investment.

Some investments are very close to a "sure thing". Some are extremely risky.

When you invest in a "sure thing" (ie; a blue chip stock) you don't need a huge return on investment to make it a good investment because you know your money isn't at any real risk. So an return somewhere around the average market rate of 8-10% is all you need.

OTOH, if you're going to invest in a high risk stock. Some penny stock, or some biotech company that's going to live or die by a single breakthrough. Then you need a much higher potential return. Because a significant amount of time the company is just going to go bankrupt and you'll lose all your money. In order to make that risk worthwhile (particularly when you could have just invested in the company in the previous paragraph) you need a potential return that's ten or a hundred times more.

In poker, the effective stack size (the smallest stack in the hand) determines the maximum amount of return. If this is too small, it's not worth investing. It's like if that high risk stock is only offering 5%. Why would you ever buy it? Investing is almost always just going to cost you money. Instead, you would want to stick to only "sure things".

Thank you very much Fatboy54, Monsieur and Cry Me a River (Again ) for your replies, with some real examples is way easier to understand for me, maybe all the poker acronyms and english being my second language overcomplicate things. I'm aware this can be deduced through common sense but I just wanted to be 100% sure I was understanding the whole concept.