Buying in short on purpose

[sirtimo]

hi yall,

I play UB mostly (.10-.25 or .25-.50 NL), and have always bought in for the max of 100 BB at these tables until the past few days when I tried buying in for the minimums at these tables to see how it would work out.

The results were quite enlightening. Had a great run over about 2.5k hands, even with the review of my PT stats showing that I didn't have a huge rush of monster cards. It seems that the short buy in for me helped in several ways. It focused my play quite a bit. I didn't play marginal hands hardly at all, I was very aware of my position, and it was very simple to play post-flop as most of the hard decisions had already been made and it was either go/no go for my stack.

Anyone out there buy in short on purpose? Any comments on shallow vs deep stack play?

regards,
Tim

[bholdr]

I never, ever, buy in for less than the max available, or at least more than everyone else at the table. that being said, if you feel that you can learn something from it, why not buy in short a few times? just be sure to take your experience and apply it to full buys later.

it sucks ass to flop a huge hand, have someone bet a couple hundred at you, and only be able to call half of the bet. As an aside, i also reload to the max whenever i get down to less than about 90% of a buy in.

[kurto]

I can see why playing short would be fun. Since your stack is shorter, there's a certain freedom in your play.

But I don't think its worth it. When you catch your big hands and have some people tagging along, you want to have as much as possible.

Furthermore, without deep stacks, it takes away the profitability of a lot of hands that are fun to play... small pp, suited connectors. And draws can now be more profitable.

[edge]

Buying in short can be ok if you don't have a big enough roll. I sometimes buy in short for 2/4, since I have less than 10 buy-ins. It makes the game simpler, since you just wait for big cards and pairs and play straightforwardly. If you're a better player than the others, you can make more with deep stacks (assuming you know how to adjust properly), but you can still profit with shallow stacks.

[elus2]

short stack just makes it easy to play tptk/tpgk type hands aggressively even on draw heavy boards where your opponents do not get the necessary implied odds to repeatedly call you down with on their draws. although playing short stack may take away the profitability from being able to play small pairs for sets/suited connectors for monster draws i believe that you can still find value in different situations. on certain tables in small stakes games overbetting flops which are quickly called by bad players can make this very lucrative. furthermore these types of situations occur with greater frequency than flopping sets, flushes, monster draws.

[swolfe]

Search the HMLHE forum for a post by Matt Flynn where he talks about how he likes to buy in short (60BB) because it makes playing pairs and whatnot easier. You double through once and you're equally stacked with everyone else and can play some poker.

[sirtimo]

thanks for the comments...

yeah, i'm used to buying in for the max myself.. but i think it seems to be very profitable to practice buying in short and picking off bigger stacks (usually fishy players who had a bit of luck) who try to chase me down.

regards,
Tim