Short Stack Play Is Not A Fight Against The Blinds
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Here’s a question I hear all the time:
“How short a stack can you play before it’s not profitable anymore? At some point the blinds eat you away too fast and you can’t wait for a good hand anymore, right?”
This question is based on a false assumption that is the subject of today’s article. Yes, there are some stack sizes too short to play profitably, but it has nothing to do with the blinds. It’s the rake. Depending on the rake structure, at some point the house is taking too large a percentage out of each pot for you to profit with some short stack sizes.
But say you’re paying time instead of a rake, and the charge is relatively small compared to the game size. (For those who don’t know, live cardrooms often charge a flat fee of, say, $7 per half hour in lieu of taking a rake.) Now you can play any stack size profitably, from 1BB on up. The blinds are never so big that they will “eat you alive.”
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Tags: no-limit-holdem, poker, Short Stack Strategy
If I could buy in for 5bb and rathole, I think I would have the highest winrate of any player in any no-limit game in California, despite the rake.