Advantages of Playing a Short Stack in NL

[Redhotman]

There is a player who for the last week or so has been sitting down at the Party NL 200, table with a min buy-in of $40. He usually folds or goes all-in. From the limited time I have played against him he seems to do okay. He normally sits at all three tables at once and leaves as soon as he doubles up, or buys in again.

My question... Sklansky gave the "System" in his book, has anyone put any research into its effectiveness in a live game setting?

You figure if you push in with AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AK, AQ
That is 68 hands out of 2562 posible hands.
This is about 3% of the hands you will recieve- which doesnt seem like a high enough number for this hand to be successful. So lets say you added 99, 88, AJ, AT,
this would give you 112/2652 = 4% of your hands.
This would mean you would push in once every 25 hands on average.

The key to profiting would be three things.
1. Playing superiorly when given the chance from the BB.
2. Getting the Party fish to call you with hands that are dominated.
3. Money from blinds and uncalled hands.

People with larger stacks are going to be limping with implied odds. I normally play hands like J9s, JTs, 55, 44, ect. These hands are folds everytime against this tyoe of strategy.

Has anyone put any thought into this strategy?

[scrub]

I've been thinking about it over the past few weeks. I noticed a lot of short-buying idiots at the UB NL games were very frustrating to play against. Their stacks were always big enough to ruin my implied odds against other large stacks when they pushed, and they tended to push when there was dead money in the pot from a bunch of limpers, some of which was often mine.

I noticed two things about these players, and the way other players reacted to them. I felt that the players employing this strategy on UB pushed way too often, and that there weren't enough open games on UB at .5/1 or higher to make the play profitable relative to solid play out of a big stack because of the anti-ratholing time limits. The interesting thing was, these short stacks consistently got called by hands that play terribly heads up and all in. Ordinarily selective players would get tired of the short stack going all in, and would call with a hand like J /images/graemlins/spade.gif10 /images/graemlins/spade.gif.

With the larger number of games running on Party, and the shorter stacks making it easier and easier to ruin the odds for rational limpers, I'm sure this strategy could be profitable. Especially if the frustration calls kept coming. The biggest thing I would be worried about is that the morons on Party might call too often. At three separate 50 NL tables last week, I saw the other 9 players at the table all go all in preflop. If shortstack pushing in pots with dead money encourages this sort of psychopathic behavior, maybe it isn't profitable... Ideally you only want 1 caller, if any. [I think...]

Anyone else have thoughts? Anyone tried it?

scrub

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone put any thought into this strategy?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, a lot. I'm positive that this is a winning strategy in these games. I haven't spent the time trying to quantify an expectation for this strategy. But I'm positive it's positive.

Having said that, I'm positive that any decent NL player in these games can make far more by buying in for the max and topping off at every opportunity.

What does that mean? Well, a short stack NL bot would be a nice moneymaker.

[Redhotman]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone put any thought into this strategy?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, a lot. I'm positive that this is a winning strategy in these games. I haven't spent the time trying to quantify an expectation for this strategy. But I'm positive it's positive.

Having said that, I'm positive that any decent NL player in these games can make far more by buying in for the max and topping off at every opportunity.

What does that mean? Well, a short stack NL bot would be a nice moneymaker.

[/ QUOTE ]
Do you know of any threads where this is discussed? I did a couple searches but didnt find anyhting.

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you know of any threads where this is discussed? I did a couple searches but didnt find anyhting.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I don't think this specificially has been discussed here, though there have been some threads discussing general short-stack NL play. Those threads are somewhat relevant, but I think the Party 50BB max buy-in games have a unique texture that almost guarantees a certain type of short stack strategy to be profitable.

[Redhotman]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Do you know of any threads where this is discussed? I did a couple searches but didnt find anyhting.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I don't think this specificially has been discussed here, though there have been some threads discussing general short-stack NL play. Those threads are somewhat relevant, but I think the Party 50BB max buy-in games have a unique texture that almost guarantees a certain type of short stack strategy to be profitable.

[/ QUOTE ]

i think that this strategy is more valuable on the 100BB buyin sites. These sites have bigger stacks which allow for more limping (implied odds).

These hands will be dead when you move in. And what is even better is if you can get into situations where 4 or 5 people call you after you go all-in with a hand like AKs.

The bigger their stacks, the better it is for you, imo.

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
The bigger their stacks, the better it is for you, imo.

[/ QUOTE ]

You raise some reasonable points. However, I believe the type of short stack strategy that will work best will be different at the 50BB and 100BB sites and will in large part be different based on the average size of stacks and how opponents react to raises. I've thought a little bit about how one would modify an optimal Party short-stack strategy at 100BB sites, but have only spent a little time observing and haven't played at those sites, so all I have are some guesses. On the other hand, at Party I've experimented with a few different approaches and I'm pretty convinced about at least one strategy that anyone could win with. I don't think I agree that it's as cut-and-dried as "the bigger their stacks the better" since I don't think the strategy I've figured out for Party would work all that well in the regular live games I play in. Obviously, the dynamic of a 100BB max buy-in game probably fits somewhere in between the two. Anyway, there's a somewhat delicate balance between how much money there is in the middle, how much people will fold for, and how much people will call for. Figuring out how to manipulate that dynamic to your advantage is the key, of course.

[1800GAMBLER]

Gift of the Gab gave us a very long post on advantages/disadvantages on short stacks.