Looking for some opinions here on buy-ins at a 1-2NL game. Doyle's strat is to buy-in for the absolute max, at least have just as many chips as the big stack at the table. Although Greenstein makes a case to buy-in for the max, he recommends to buy in for the minimum and try to double up. What are people's thoughts on this?

if oure good buy in for max. If youre not or if youre nervous buy in for short

Greenstein is obviously talking about limit pokers.

no, it was NL. He was making the case that if you're limited on chips, it makes the tougher decisions easier. Just basic short-stack poker.

Interesting comment. When I buy-in for $100, I get nervous. If I double, triple that or more, then I get much more comfortable.

if you are good/competent player, buy in to cover the table.

Yeah, buy in for the max they'll let you if you can. While play live really sucks, their raise sizes pre make stacks a lot shallower. I.e. a $200 stack @ 1/2 is more or less equivalent to a $100 online stack because pre avg raise is like 12+. You can really mess with live players w/ bigger stacks because they tend to nut peddle and generally don't know how to play when they are deeper than 200bb

played $1/$2 in AC yesterday and bought in for table minimum. Used the first hour to observe the game and played strict short-stack strategy ( see Ed Miller's articles ). Learned there were three players to attack and one guy to be careful against. I then added chips to the table max.

Max buy-in is great if you are the best ( or at least a close second best ) in the game but you don't really know until you've played a several rotations.

Simple solid poker will beat a $1/$2 game but you obviously need to make some minor adjustments for individual villans.

When you sit down nobody announces "I'll stackoff trying to hit a gutshot " or " I'll slow play a set and stack you if you're silly enough to think TPTK is aways a winner."

Why start off a session risking getting stacked simply because you didn't have a feel for the table ?

I always buy in for the max and play tight (on the nitty side) until I get a table feel. Then you can take advantage of your tight image and start to play. A good player shouldn't feel nervous buying in full........

I'd really hate to buy in for the min, get dealt AA on the first orbit only to have the table maniac with 500 bbs shove into me pre-flop.

I played in AC this past weekend and there was no way a decent player was going to get stacked for 200 BBs with TPTK. I turbo-mucked QQ on a 8 high flop when a guy 3-bet preflop and then check raised AI with an 8 high board into 2 players. He proudly flipped over AA and collected a $75 pot.

im always the best at the table, i never need a couple of rounds for me to confirm it. i auto-top up in live games, too...i think it tilts ppl when i have a rack of red out of play, and refill my stack in like $40 increments every hand

I live in Florida, where we play $2/5 and sometimes $5/10 with a $100 max buyin (not a typo).
Makes for a really weird ****ing game.


Vegas I buy in for 150bb since I think that stack size plays better than 100bb with the bigger preflop raises of live play. While I understand Greenstein's point about buying in short, I just think a 50bb stack is silly when people are raising to $15-20 preflop playing $1/2.