[Harv72b]

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i'll tell you before some of the "owners" of this forum do -you might want to post this in the b&m forum

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FWIW, while the OP obviously intended for answers to be B&M-specific, I see this behavior fairly often on internet tables, too (particularly 6max). So I think it applies to this forum as well as the B&M one (come to think of it, it would probably fit on the psychology forum, too).

Anyway, it's a terrible strategy for the simple reason that they are cheating themselves out of bets when they really do have a big hand (and making it more likely that someone will draw out on them, because it's a lot easier to call a flop bet with a weak draw like a gutshot if you know your opponent can only charge you 1 more BB, or less, to see the river). This is why you always want to have at least 12 BBs in front of you when you're sitting at the table--once in a blue moon you will flop quads vs. someone else's nut boat, and if you run out of chips you're just cheating yourself out of money.

I think that many inexperienced players make this mistake because, A) they don't understand just how big a mistkae it is, and B) the psychological impact of actually buying in for $200 or so at once is much greater than buying in for $40 at a time, five times. In a live game, I'd put a big ol' "fish" stamp on any player who does this. In an online game, I tend to think that players who buy in ridiculously short-stacked are just out to bluff their way to a few pots and then move on.