Q&A #83: Adjusting to a Deeper Stack AKA What’s Wrong With Playing for the Big Score

Ed,
Thanks a million for the advice. I will certainly print this out to add to my other print outs of my favorite of your blogs that I am attempting to drill into my head. I don’t know why having deep stacks would equate (in my mind) to playing out of position; seems a littly “fishy” to me! I suppose a part of it is greed; once the chips start stacking up sometimes your ego tells you to play wrong for the right reasons.
You are certainly right about not stealing often enough. I steal (or attempt)once in a while, but there are plenty of opportunities that I don’t get in there and take my share of the dead money.
On another subject, I play in Shreveport, LA. If you take a trip to Tunica, I would love to know, if just to be able to sit down and play a few hands with you.
Thanks again for the solid advice,it will certainly not go unused!

Your mentality seems to change from playing 100BB to 160BB, for the worse.

This is throwing you off your game.

Why not keep it simple, stand up, put 60BB back in your pocket, and sit back down at another table with 100BB. Simple and easy, I’m sure your “good” game at 100BB still needs work. Why try to work on both your 100BB and 160BB game.

Stand up and sit at another table.

Also are you comfortable going all-in with AA pre-flop with 160BB?

I’m sure as hell not.

I play a game where I can buy in deep, and play that game consistently buying in deep, and I’m not afraid for a second to go all-in preflop with AA.

You may say: “Oh I’m not afraid to go all-in preflop no matter what BB im at, even 300BB!?”

You think that’s true? I think you are full of BS. Take your life savings, go at a table of 10 where everyone has you covered. Now go all-in against a table of ten with AA with your life savings. You are not willing to risk your entire life on AA because you cannot play it in this amount consistently.

You can play 100BB consistently for 2-5NL. So when you get to 150BB or more, stand up and move on. When you lose to set over set with 200BB in front of you, you will learn your lesson quickly and suffer.

I agree with you up til where you start talking about going all in with AA. My mentality does change for the worse when I start getting deep stacked; that is exactly why I posted my thread. Also, I have thought before of racking some of my chips when I double up and just try and double up again; still think I may try it once.
I am not sure where the rest of your post comes from. What a specific situation like playing AA for all your life savings has to do with my question is beyond me. Not sure how I am full of BS when I haven’t even posted anything in the vicinity of what the last part of your post reads. I am not trying to be defensive or rude, but I honestly don’t know where you are coming from. Please clarify.

Oh I am not saying you are full of BS at all I was just playing devil’s advocate.

What I am trying to say is that:

#1 – You should play deep stack, and play deep stack consistently the same way (play your A game)

#2 – You should play deep-stack an amount you can play consistently without fear of getting stacked. (if you went to 10-25 NL you would fear getting stacked deep-stack because that would be a huge percentage of your savings)

#3 – When you play deep-stacked you should not fear going all-in preflop with AA.

What I am saying is that by playing with 160BB you are already playing incorrectly when you play overly deep. And that if you are willing to play with 160BB overly deep (which leads you to play bad), then you should move your game up to the next level where you are just “deep” so you will then play correctly. Like moving from 2-5 NL to 5-10 NL.

All I am saying is that you can gauge if you are playing with too much money in front of you by 2 things:

#1 – You are playing off your game, playing incorrectly

and

#2 – If you held AA, you would be afraid to go all-in for fear of losing that much money.

Gotcha, sorry for any misreading your intentions, is hard to judge someone’s tone through the internet!
Unfortunately $2/5 is the highest NL cash game in town. Shreveport and surrounding area is only about 500,000 population and even the Horseshoe casino here doesn’t offer a bigger NL game. Not to say that I would do well, but I would certainly give it a shot. I am certainly not wealthy or heavily bankrolled player so I don’t frequent the tables as often as I like. As much as I am confident I can come out a winner on most days, I still don’t play unless it is money I can lose without any consideration.
As far going all-in with AA w/160+ BB preflop; afraid, possibly; really depends on the situation. I would much rather push all-in than call; but being afraid would certainly not keep me from getting my money in the pot; you have to get your money in with the best of it and sometimes just let the poker gods do what they do best!
So, I totally get what your are saying now and #2 is not my concern (afraid to go all in with AA). #1 is my problem, I tend to lower my requirements in early position even though I know better. Realizing it yourself is one thing but having someone else put it to you and add some very genuine and construtive critisism really tends to drill it into your skull!

Ed,

Funny you should to mention 98s in your explanation. It’s my #1 losing hand. My top are also suited connectors and suited 1 gappers. Yes, I have been playing these OOP, but no more.

Thanks for fixing my biggest leak.

Ummm..Ed does not play 98s OOP even though it’s listed as a “bread and butter” hand + one of the UL (= Usually Limp) hands in EP (NLHTP/A Preflop Strategy)? Even AJo isnt in the EP/UL list..

*confused*

I think the problem with with the list in (NLHTP/A Preflop Strategy)is it doesn’t take into account stack sizes. The suited connectors aren’t really bread and butter hands until stack sizes get large. I’m not sure how big stacks need to be to play these OOP, but I’m convinced at 50BB or so they should be tossed OOP.

I would only play 98s in position when I could limp-in. If I could Limp-in i would raise the pot amount (if there were not many callers) to generate some fold equity.

Limping with 98s in position is only going to generate cash if you are playing against donks (no offense to my man the donkstar) who let you get there. (it’s a drawing hand, you are going to flop draws not “great” hands”)

Otherwise playing your 98s is going to get you to make some dangerous calls, and if you falter in your discipline you’ll be chasing some hands you shouldn’t have been and not getting the proper implied odds either when you finally hit… which will be rare…

if you play your 98s out of position you will SUFFER.

swanny903 – One of the things that helps me is verbalizing what I should do.

Many times my emotions say, call call call!!! Because I love my hand, and it looks so good, and it has such potential, but I know its a loser.

My emotions get involved and say: “CALL!”

But my logic says: “YOU ARE BEAT, FOLD!”

(often times people let there emotions control their actions, and as such if you don’t stop and think you will make the incorrect call)

If you are playing online, talk out loud and verbalize what you should “logically” do.

This helps me out when I play online. Many times I emotionally want to call, but then I stop, take a breath, verbalize out loud the logical thing to do. Then I listen to the logic and perform the action of the logic and not the emotion.

If you are playing at the Casino, then you can’t talk out loud… instead verbalize it silently to yourself… realize that your logic is the correct action VS. your emotion, and peform the logic.

In a nutshell, your emotions want you to perform one action, and your logic wants you to perform another action. LISTEN TO YOUR LOGIC!!!

Ed – spoken like a tru pro.

BTW my GF likes your cats. hehe (myspace)

I would take the advice of Ed any day over Helmuth.

Helmuth is a big baby, Ed… can you please take all of his money??? Helmuth is one of those guys you love to hate.

Been watching SBRUGBY playing online, pretty sick.

I am confused. In Ed’s book with Slanskey, suited connectors to 54s(and I think 1 gappers to 53s) were “bread and butter” hands to be normally limped (i.e. limp 80%, raise 20%). Is the different thought now because we are dealing with much lower stakes?

Yes, I can see your point Ed about taking things out of context and now that I look more closely at the section in the book it clearly states that the main function is to serve as “a sanity check to make sure you aren’t way off base”.

I have to say tho that this is the section I liked most in the book, it’s really the core in my preflop strategy, altho I play somewhat more hands in EP. I am still quite the beginner, playing in 0.25/0.50euro blinds still.

Can’t wait to get my copy on PNLHE to further improve my game – thats what I like about your books&articles, they are well written and complex topics are broken into a more easily understood form.

In response to the NLTAP preflop strategy, I have based a lot of my starting requirements(especially EP and MP) off of this. However, I try to be mindful with SC’s, PP’s, and Axs before doing anything with them from MP. I think the SC’s and Axs hands are playable if the game isn’t too aggressive. However, if the game starts getting aggressive I start letting these hands go or making a raise with them.

In LP I don’t have a “strategy”.

All you have to do is ask yourself what would my hero do:

http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/060729/060729_hellmuth_vmed_7p.widec.jpg

Haha.

This is off topic but amusing.

I was in Vegas in June at the very beginning of the WSOP. My group decided to go over to the Rio and check it out. As we walk in PH is sitting on the first table as you enter the room on the right side. We look over to see him do a stop, put his hands on his head, and then nod his head back and forth in disgust over something that had just happened.

It was funny because you see him making scenes on TV and everything and then as soon as we walk in that room the first thing I was saw him doing his thing (granted – he wasn’t making a scene, or anything wrong for that matter, but it was still funny to see him get disgusted ).

I disagree about playing small suited connectors, etc. (except for small pairs) with Plan A being to steal the pot post-flop at the 2/5 NL games. Have you ever played the 2/5 NL games at the Commerce Casino or the Bicycle Casino? If you try to steal pots from most of these guys, especially after 7pm, good luck. It’s tough to do that even the 10/20 NL Commerce game on Fri/Sat night. I think when you play a pot with the first plan to steal it, you should have noticed at least 2 things first regarding your opponent: 1.) is this guy capable of folding? Even just AK on a flop of low cards? What about a pair of 6′s when the flop is K 10 2. Many 2/5 NL players in So Cal have a very hard time folding here. And 2.) What is the likelihood that my opponent will c-bet the flop? Does he c-bet automatically? If you’re in position against an auto-c-better, stealing from him will be expensive when either you’re wrong and he hit the flop or when your opponent won’t fold and will test you on the turn and/or river. If out of position, does this guy seem to fold to lead out flop bets? Or does he take at least 1 off?

I agree with pretty much everything else of the advice column. With that being said, everything about poker is so player dependent. What works against newbies may or may not work against solid, good players. And what works against newbies or donks may actually work well against world class players, but for very different reasons.

When playing with deep stacks, the response was right on the money about being careful with big pairs. Just like Doyle says in Super System, most of the time AA wins a very small pot or loses a big one. I think the major considerations that should be made when you have a big stack is how deep is your opponent and how likely is your opponent to lose his whole stack if you hit. Can this guy fold AA to a turn of J 4 3 2 rainbow? If no, then playing small suited connectors can be very profitable.

Just my humble opinions (which change slightly every month or so).

Playing in a 2-5 home cash game I have found myself many times stuck with a cold deck for hours. I mean sick cards to the point were I get the same hand Q-3o perhaps 7-8 times in a row with a J-4 or K-2 mixed in hand-after-hand. While this is going on, monsters are being turned up all around me. I often thought that if I changed my seat to the other side of the table it might mix the cards enough to change them for me. I this sound strategy or should I just stay where I am?

Borgata has a 12 noon friday $75-k Guaranteed. I have made it several times to the final table however once there (final table) everyone wants to do some sort of chop. Typically it is based on stack size, which seems fair. My problem is that after 9 hours of play and making it to the final table I want to play it down. I know I’m not under any obligation to chop but my question is how rude is it to be the only person who doesn’t want to do it? and is it ok to say lets play it down to 3 or 4 and re-look at choping from that point? Thanks JT