The Virtue of Playing The Short Stack

Hi Ed,

I recently decided to give low stakes no-limit a try using your Short Stack strategy, and it’s working out pretty well!

Thing is, in using the strategy, all of a sudden my stack isn’t so “short” any more. So I end up with a medium or relatively large stack and find myself in unfamiliar territory.

A few days ago I sat down at a 1-2 no limit game (with buy in of min=$20 / max=$200), with $50 and everyone else had $200+. I paid the blinds for a few orbits until I was at ~$30, got a hand, made a nice raise pre-flop, went all-in on the flop, and then my stack was at $180. So, now I’m not short stacked anymore. What do I do?

I just played ultra cautiously from there. However, I’m certain I could have leveraged my new stack size. So, what’s the transition strategy?

Thanks,

Dave

- Dave

Playing short stack on the Internet encourages bad play. My rakeback is close to the same as playing short stack but profits are lower than buying in for the full stack. For me, variance is much higher with short stack and is close to the same money as a full stack. Of course the play has to change according to your stack and others, however, I believe that variance decreases when the threat of the large stack costing others more money mentally is present.

I started after about nine years to play limit poker online although slightly profitable I swithced to NL, however, I had not played NL since about 1990. My variance with a full stack in NL is lower than that of limit.

Ed – mentioned blind play earlier becuase of reflecting on Poker Tracker I am always wondering what I need to do to decrease my loss from the blinds and wondering how much of my play in the other positions is affecting my profit.

Gosh Selby,

Seems you’d want to encourage “bad” play.

My 2 cents.

Dave

i started learning how to play no limit by playing shortstack multitable. I’d buy in for 10 or 20BB in ten nl 10 tables and go all in on flop with top ten hands and/or any pair against loose opponents. I’d win and double up and quit. thats my “transition” strategy when I double up or triple up I quit, because I have too great a firepower to make people call. There is a sweet spot where people start not to call your all ins preflop or on the flop. no matter what you inspire them, If your stack is 20-30BB, they wont call. but they would call a 10-20BB all in with utmostly surprisingly strange holdings…

So my experience tells me that a short stack strategy is optimal when people take your all in and starts losing money when people fold to your all ins. but its only nl 10. and its only small fishes.

on the other hand I think a large percentage of my profit came from the people folding their limp/raise/blinds money against my preflop all in… sometimes all the table (6max shorthanded) would fold their limping+blind money winning me 2-4BB instantly.

anyway I played that strategy to start my no limit poker career and reached a 20 buy ins bankroll to start playing deepstack. I started playing with -some- success at deepstack with all the shortstack experience, winning 6.4BB/100 over 7000 hands. I could do a lot better with an expert betting size, math abilities (i have more a “literature” background) and late rounds play. But only on preflop and flop play, I still sometimes dominate my opponents thanks to the shortstack experience.

Now I regret I didnt track my shortstack progression with pokertracker.

Shortstack is probably my favorite way to play, even to the point of going all-in blind in certain situations (although this is not preferred!). I will always play my shortstack before rebuying for the excellent opportunities it gives. Here is a great example:

I am UTG at a live 1/2 game with only $15 after taking a couple bad beats. I decide that I have little value in waiting for a hand at this point, so i will make this may all-in hand, as I expect to get several callers, and I can see the board to the river, unlike most other players at the table, and before the cards are dealt I am just as likely to win as anyone else.

So I straddle for $4, hoping to induce some calls to build the pot from folks who might not notice I am short-stacked (this is a 1/2 game after all). I get some strange looks from the guys next to me; they think I’m crazy. But lucky for me, I am in seat 9, and some of the folks on the other end of the table don’t seem to notice what I am doing.

Lucky for me, something like 6 players call the $4 straddle before it gets to me! So I go all-in blind for my last $11. A few people call, then a player decides to isolate me and raises to $100. Everyone folds. So, now I am heads-up with a random hand. The pot is now ~$95, of which I contributed only 15, and I am heads’ up This is great news for me! I can’t imagine much better pot odds and the raiser increased my chances substantially by betting the others out of the pot with his $100 bet.

The board ends up showing 93QJ2 at the end, and the other player turns over K9 for a pair of nines. I turn over my first card… an Ace… and a second… a Jack. So I just turned $17 into $95 with a random hand.

Anytime I can get in a 1/2 pot when I have $20 or less where there are at least 3 people already in, I will take it. The advantage of seeing the board to the river and of having others bet other players out of the pot far makes up for any disadvantage that my (likely poor) hand gives me.
In this example, my AJ was a decent hand, but I could have easily had any number of garbage hands with the same result.

Which is better therefore…to buy in for the Max at say $1/2 game, or buy in for the same amount but at a game 1-2 levels higher?

I guess this series of articles is for people who’ve never read GSIHE.

Seriously, after going round and round on this topic on 2+2 uSNL and others several times, I finally got bored parroting Ed.

The more sophisticated argument proferred there goes as follows: There’s no inherent advantage to bigger stacks, but they’re most profitable for a good player. You want to become a good player, so you need to learn to play deep stacks. Therefore, you should buy in deep as a beginner. Otherwise you’ll never learn.

This always struck me like learning Spanish by going through the Quijote word by word with your dictonary (Ugh!) or learning piano by plucking out the Rach 3 note by note. It’s commonly accepted pedagogical wisdom that you start with the basics in those other disciplines. NLHE gives you just such a way to start small, by buying in short. But all the “experts” on the forums sagely advise you to try to learn deep-stack postflop play at the same time you learn not to call normal preflop reraises with pocket nines.

I always suspected they just wanted more dead money in the games.

To be sure, it’s implicit in Ed’s writing that he disagrees. (If not, why include the short-stack chapter in GSIHE? Just tell everyone to practice online at microstakes for months before they can set foot in a casino with a “real” stack!) But if Ed’s ever explicitly addressed that learning rationale, please point me there.

wahoo,

I’m pretty sure that straddling and short-stacking are mutually incompatible ways to play well. Straddling has some value, as Ed has written about, but it’s long-term psychological value. Short-stacking minimizes that gain, whereas the price of the straddle remains constant.

Candidly, even a knowledgeable beginner should top up from 7.5 BBL to about 15 or 20, presuming she feels comfortable with that stack size for the stakes in question.

I decided to play the hands you mention in your book with a short stack.

Well – the results are underwhelming to say the least – but LOSING 11 of 12 pushes in 444 hands (VPIP 6%) will not win you much money!! LOL

I did win 15 hands without a showdown. but MAN – can not win ANY big hand.

Short stack big stack to me its all the same, its a cash games some dumb shit will call you down… ship it!