[pzhon]

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I have always agreed with pzhon that buying short can be the most +EV play, depending on who you are and where you're playing.

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Thanks. I'd keep saying it even if (or especially if) no one believed me, but it's nice to see some agreement.

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But I disagree that buying for 50BB is ever right, if 50BB isn't the minimum buyin.

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In that case, you disagree with El Diablo's tactic of buying in for $1000-$1500 in a live $10/$20 game at first, and buying in for $2500 in the UB $25/$50 game. I don't play in these games, so I don't fully understand the context of his decisions, but he has discussed some reasons. IIRC, one point he made was that it is valuable to get more information before buying in deep. Another was that many people don't play their A game when there is a stack disparity. They feel they only need to play carefully against someone who can take their whole stack. In a tough game where an expert has a low win rate, getting your opponent to tilt in this fashion can be valuable relative to a normal advantage. So can the ability to steal the limps a bit more frequently.

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If buying short is the most +EV move for you at a particular time, then there are two overriding reasons why that is so. First, it limits the amplitude of your errors. Second, it reduces the chance that you can make a mistake postflop, since you are going all-in preflop so frequently.

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There are quite a few other considerations. As zippy pointed out, "Buying in for 50BB instead of 100BB certainly strips away implied odds for large stacks looking to play speculative hands." Look at what happens with the 5%-10% rule: If you raise to 5 BB after someone limps with a speculative hand, they have to call 4 BB, or 4% of their stack if the effective stack size is 100 BB. That's an easy call with a low pocket pair, and a marginal call (or marginal fold) with a suited connector out of position. If you have 50 BB, the call is 8% of the effective stack sizes, which makes it a clear fold with a suited connector, and only a marginal call with a pocket pair.

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you'll get all-in preflop infrequently which exposes you to postflop play.

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My goal isn't to avoid postflop play. Having a different stack size from what people anticipate when they choose which hands to play can give a short stack an advantage in post-flop play. A short stack can play pair poker (and semibluff aggressively with draws), just as people did successfully in Party's old 50 BB structure.

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In fact, I might go so far as to say that if it's theoretically most +EV to play short, but the minimum buyin is 50BB, then in reality it's most +EV to play deep at a (edit) smaller game. The reason for this is becasue the amplitude of your errors is unchanged in reall dollars,

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I don't think your errors or your opponents' are the same size in real dollars.

I win many pots by open-raising preflop to 4 BB, getting one caller. I bet 6 BB on the flop, and take down an 8.5-9.5 BB pot. Many opponents call preflop, then fold on the flop so frequently that they have a huge leak somewhere, possibly calling with garbage like QTo or A9o and then folding unless they have top pair. The size of that leak is in proportion with the blinds, not the stacks. I'm getting almost the same value from that leak whether I have 50 BB or 100 BB.