Short stack play in the Party NL 2000

[Ulysses]

How good this strategy is depends largely on what the average action is pre-flop. 50bb is a nice amount in the UB 25/50 game because it often lets you get in your stack very good on the flop. 100bb is often an unwieldy amount in that game given the standard pre-flop action. On the other hand, 100bb is a great amount in the UB 10/25 game and often lets you have 2 streets of play. Of course, given the right caliber of bad opponents, those considerations become less important and you just always want to buy in for as much as possible. I've spent a (very) little time in the Party 2000 game and based on what I've seen (both at the start and just last week), I'd always buy in for 2000 in that game. Too many players willing to get stacked with not very much and not quite as aggressive play on early streets as the UB games.

In general, when deciding how much to buy in, I think you should consider a few factors:

1) How do you stack up v. the competition?

2) What is the average action pre-flop?

3) How many streets do you want to play?

4) Given the other factors, at what point and how will you get pot-committed?

Basically, I think you want to avoid situations where stack sizes result in you either getting yourself pot-committed with mediocre hands against decent players or having to make either underbets or overly large overbets.