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Over the past few weeks I’ve been talking a lot about short stacks and how you can gain an inherent advantage simply by buying in for less than your opponents. Something I said, however, struck Joe, today’s questioner, as wrong, ...
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In a $1-$2 blind game with a $4 rake, I think the rake would eat up all your advantage… and potentially more than that.
I want to make clear that this series isn’t my plea for everyone to run around buying in for 20BB. That’s absolutely not my point.
My main point is that I think a lot of people persist in fundamentally misunderstanding how short and deep stacks interact with one another in NL games… cash games and tournaments. The idea that big stacks can “bully” small stacks (and that the bullying is an effect of the fundamental math of the game rather than the psychology) is still pervasive, and I’m mostly just trying to debunk it.
My second point is that NL can be scary for a lot of players. Lots of people play a very weak-tight brand of NL, and I think at the root of it for many players is a fundamental fear of getting stacked. People buy in for $200 or whatever, but then they do everything they can to avoid any confrontation (without the nuts, of course) for more than about $50. That’s a TERRIBLE way to play NL, and if you’re going to play that way, I think you’re a whole lot better off buying in for $50 and learning that getting stacked is part of the game and no big embarassment/letdown.
A tertiary, minor point is that if you’re a good, but not awesome player, and you have a bankroll that supports buying in for about $1,000 at a time, you occasionally will be better off buying in for 20BB at a $25-$50 game than for 100BB at a $5-$10 game. It depends on the players and how the games are playing, but it’s an option you should keep in the back of your mind.
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The other caveat that his gone away some in the discussions that included tournament talk is that in a raked cash game, the smaller your stack, the more that the rake affects your return rate. Thus having a really small stack gives you an advantage over the other players, but the rake takes a bigger bite of your advantage.