short stacked PLO

[jomatty]

i have been playing a lot of short stack PLO lately and was wondering what adjustments others make when playing like this.

i have not played as much PLO as i have other games and my strategy is fairly straightforward. i play tighter than i do with a big stack and raise a lot less with the small stack. my main goal is to get my stack in against one or two (or sometimes more)opponents with a large equity advantage.

i dont worry as much about protecting my hand as i do with a large stack and focus more on getting my money in when i have a good equity situation with a big draw/made hand. if there was going to be more money left to bet id obv have to be more careful with this.

im not quite as careful about position as i am with a full stack since my hands are generally easier to play out of position since i am often all in on the flop. i check raise more as i dont think the risk of giving a free card is quite as disastrous, since my plan is to see all 5 cards and need to show down a winner and check raising is often the best way to get it all in with a big hand against multiple opponents. although, if a sizable pot has been created preflop and i am able to bet the majority of my stack i will often do so.

bluffing plays a small part of my overall strategy since i dont have the ammo to follow through, but if a good situation arises i still go ahead and fire. bare ace type bluffs often seem unprofitable without the risk of continued aggression and the threat to the opponents entire stack so i find they must be used more carefully.

like any poker strategy exceptions abound but these are some of the adjustments im makeing. is anyone else playing PLO with a short stack, and if so, what are you doing differently?
matty

I used to play short stacked all the time, and I still do when I experiment at higher stakes. The only adjustment I made that you don't mention is to select tables with high %see flop and low avg pot size. This indicates lots of pre-flop limping or mini-raises which allows you to play almost any decent hand OOP and fire at a good flop almost all-in.

The only other thing I'd add that many players will assume you're a noob simply because you bought in short. When you pot the flop with the nuts they'll almost always call with an underset, understraight, underflush, underboat, any 2 pair, etc. Sometimes 4 or 5 people will end up calling behind you. You can get insane odds on your money against the right opponents.

[BluffTHIS!]

Most sites allow you to buyin for either the max or for as little as 20% of the max. I personally for many reasons always buyin for the max. But it is perfectly acceptable to buyin shorter either in order to stretch your bankroll so that you can play at a particular level, or because you believe it is a good strategy in general as Rolf has recommended in some of his columns. However, I think it is a mistake to buyin for the absolute minimum. This is because that although you are not paying any more in blinds than the max stacks, it nevertheless does cost you more to play in raised pots where you mostly fold the flop and are not in a situation to reraise allin preflop with aces. Then after you have paid all those preflop raises and finally get allin and double up, you have only gotten even. So if you are going to buyin for the absolute minimum, then you should just play supertight and only seek situations to get allin preflop with aces or maybe kings with very good sidecards when you don't believe a preflop raiser has aces. So I would recommend buying in for 40%+ in order to be able to make something, and so that in smaller pots you are able to bluff effectively if the situation warrants it.

Also SilentAcorn's advice about seeking tables with relatively small pot sizes would especially have merit if you are buying in for the min. This is because I see everyday on the 1K/2K tables where someone playing that short stack finally gets the big AA and reraises allin. The only problem is that it is a fairly loose and aggressive table, and the rest of us just go ahead and call $200 or $400 and take the flop 5 handed and pretend that player isn't there. With aces you ideally want to be headsup, but on those kind of tables that won't happen. Of course if you hit the board good then you really score, and you can always hope that an overly aggressive player with only an overpair and a gutshot bets big into a dry side pot driving the other players out, and your aces win unimproved. But the majority of the time you will simply be rebuying on those aggressive tables because any kind of hand that could get there will.

[jomatty]

when i find myself in this situation where ive called a raise and then had to muck and my stack has gotten too small i just add on a little more. esp at party its easy to always add even a relatively small amount to get your stack where you want it.
it truly is amazing the hands people will call with assuming that your a donk. many times it seems like every draw has hit and ive written the pot off only to find that they called my all in with bottom two or top pair or some such. gotta love party poker.
also, while i obviously prefer to play my AAxx hands heads up if i fail to get it hu when on a short stack its not nearly the disaster it is if im on deep money. im still in a +ev situation and i dont have to worry about things like how difficult my hand is to play post flop and getting stacked for a large stack. i often get the other advantage of someone betting a draw hard and knocking the other players out and leaving us both in a +ev situation due to all the dead money in the pot. if it dosent work out i just rebuy, rinse and repeat. in those multiway pots i dont have to win that often to show a profit. that said, id obviously rather have the hand hu, but if i cant get it that way its not the sort of disaster it can be with deep money.
matty