Small Stack vs. Big Stack

[Triumph36]

I really don't understand your point. The shortstack strategy means only playing premium hands, this means TT or better for pairs and AQ or AK. If you're calling raises with any of those 'implied odds' hands, you're not getting the proper implied odds from his stack to bust him. Problem is, if other big stacks get involved in the hand, you're getting implied odds from their stacks, so now you think, do I call and try to bust the other player, knowing that on almost any flop, the short stack pushes?

When his stack gets larger, he will no longer be playing the short stack strategy since he knows he will be offering implied odds. Therefore, the fold or all-in on the flop strategy no longer applies, and he has to play poker. You suggest that other players will use an all-in strategy as a counter to this 'short stack' strategy, but once again, the smaller stack can call when he's strong and fold when he's marginal.

Your point seems to be about getting broken. Ed's seems to be that the way in which these short stacks are getting broken is by -EV plays. Once again, Ed is arguing logic and math: Players who consistently take the worst of it cannot be holding an advantage.

I believe Tommy Angelo and Matt Flynn have posted about this short stack strategy as a way of building a bankroll for 5/10 NL.

[tylerdurden]

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No that simple fact doesn’t, but if Martha knows how to ‘Big Stack” then your ass is grass. Especially if there’s no cap.

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Why? You're buying into the "big stacks bully small stacks" theory, which has been pretty convincingly debunked for cash games.

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The guy on the other end of the phone knows what he is talking about, especially if the max is $2000 in the 10/20 NL game. The reason is simple, if four or more players have 5x the max ($10,000), they can take over the game.

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Same fallacy.

If you're playing the short stack strategy, you WANT to get put all in with the hands you choose to play. All other hands you throw away. You're not getting pushed around. If you're playing beyond your bankroll, you've got a whole different set of problems.

The only time a big stack has an advantage over a small stack is when the bigger stack is a better player than the smaller stack. Period.

[pzhon]

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The point is if I have you outstacked enough it is almost inevitable that I will either push you around all night or break you. Think about it in terms of me setting you in with a four flush, the odds say I’ll hit one out of three, so I miss and you double to $400, I miss and you go to $800, I hit and you’re rebuying. If I have enough money in comparison to you, then the odds favor me breaking you. And since the max buy-in is capped, I can do this over and over again with an ever growing stack.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is painfully wrong.

Suppose you set me in repeatedly when I am a 2:1 favorite. You lose chips on average every time you do this. You can't add negative numbers to get a positive number. I might bust out most of the time, but when I don't, I win far more than I need to make up for the times I lose. Every time I rebuy, you may be paying 30:1 on a 4:1 shot. That is a great deal for me and horrible for you if you like money. It is wrong to think something is -EV just because it loses most of the time, or +EV just because it wins most of the time.

Whatever my stack size is, everyone is a target. If you constantly bluff and semi-bluff against me, you are making yourself the easiest target on the table. I love finding tables with a bully with a big stack.

This sounds just like those who say you should be wary of calling all-in with AA in tournaments because you are a favorite not to win several in a row, another common fallacy. No one is a favorite to win every tournament. The easiest way to win a tournament is to get all-in as a big favorite a few times.

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There are some players who employ this strategy very well (I’m not saying that they are all winning players,

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Many losing players may be thought of as rational with nonmonetary feedback. Sheriffs like to catch people bluffing, and perhaps they enjoy this (or fear that someone will bluff them) more than they value the huge amounts they pay off when people aren't bluffing. Maybe bullies enjoy stacking people and stealing pots more than they dislike doubling people up, and this difference makes up for the amount of money they lose by bad semi-bluffs of pot-committed short stacks.

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if four or more players have 5x the max ($10,000), they can take over the game. Let’s say the previous ‘big pair’ raise was 5x the big blind ($100), they’ll just start raising 25x the big blind ($500) which is in the same proportion to their stacks as 5x was to the table max.

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Then they are exposing $500 to try to pick up the $30 in blind money. This is a horrible idea. On average, when they run into a solid reraising (or even calling) hand, they will regret raising, and the regret will be on the order of hundreds of dollars. Their gain when they steal the blinds is only $30, and they will only steal a few blinds before running into a real hand.

[grimel]

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The point is if I have you outstacked enough it is almost inevitable that I will either push you around all night or break you. Think about it in terms of me setting you in with a four flush, the odds say I’ll hit one out of three, so I miss and you double to $400, I miss and you go to $800, I hit and you’re rebuying. If I have enough money in comparison to you, then the odds favor me breaking you. And since the max buy-in is capped, I can do this over and over again with an ever growing stack.

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This is painfully wrong.

Suppose you set me in repeatedly when I am a 2:1 favorite. You lose chips on average every time you do this. You can't add negative numbers to get a positive number.

[/ QUOTE ]

This might be more correctly stated as: The odds on the hands are not additive. If a hand is 3:1, it's 3:1 the second time and 3:1 the third time and 3:1 the fourth time and 3:1 the fifth time. Nothing says it can't hit or miss 10 straight times. It is 3:1 long term over hundreds and thousands of instances.

[Suntzu00000]

Who cares. In a NL cash game stack sizes are irrelevant.

[Suntzu00000]

BluffTHIS!,

1) Big stacks can profitably play a wider variety of hands against other big stacks;

<font color="red"> Only if you are a better player. </font>

2) Big stacks can bluff/buy pots whereas a short stack always has to make the best hand to win (and there is way more money to be made this way than by having to make the best hand, and which is of more monetary value than the advantage of a small stack in not being able to be bullied);


<font color="red"> This is countered by the fact that you cant bluff effectively against a short stack. And If your talking about big stacks, then just read my first response again. </font>

3) Small stacks can never effectively protect a hand postflop, which overall in the course of many hands played negates it's immunity from being bullied;

<font color="red"> This is obvious and irrelevant. </font>

4) The implied threat of a big stack versus other big stacks often results in being able to take free cards and see checked rivers with drawing and marginal hands which is always favorable;

<font color="red"> You get infinite free cards when you are all-in. And again, none of these are advantages unless you are a better player than the other big stack.
</font>

5) Besides the ability of a big stacks to play more hands profitably than a small stack, the blinds are small in realtion to the big stack, whereas the blind pressure on a small stack is extreme. This is an important point because the cost of playing via the blinds forces small stacks to pay a high price for waiting for premium hands whereas well-played big stacks can often steal enough blinds to have a virtual freeroll.

<font color="red"> Irrelevant, being a short stack does not mean you are on a short roll. Every time through the blinds you can add a few bucks. </font>

Drawing hands in big bet poker gain precisely from the ability to bet on the end (implied odds again).

<font color="red"> Not neccessarily. A flush draw for example loses its value once its hit because its obvious. As does a board with a 4 card straight. Furthermore, this is also only an advantage if you are more skilled in these situations than the other big stacks. A small stack on the other hand gets paid off in full every time it makes a straight or flush. </font>

<font color="green">What it comes down to is this; the better a player you are versus the other players at the table the more chips you want in front of you. If you know you are the best player, you would ideally like to have everyone covered. </font>

[pzhon]

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[ QUOTE ]

Suppose you set me in repeatedly when I am a 2:1 favorite. You lose chips on average every time you do this. You can't add negative numbers to get a positive number.

[/ QUOTE ]

This might be more correctly stated as: The odds on the hands are not additive. If a hand is 3:1, it's 3:1 the second time and 3:1 the third time and 3:1 the fourth time and 3:1 the fifth time. Nothing says it can't hit or miss 10 straight times. It is 3:1 long term over hundreds and thousands of instances.

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What I said was correct. What you said wasn't my point.

If you set me in as an underdog (knowing I'll call), that is -EV for you. If you do it several times, it is -EV for you each time. Even if I am an underdog to survive all of these hands, the collection of actions is not +EV for you. You lose on average.

This is like a betting progression in roulette. You can't win on average by doubling your wager after losing. If you try that, you have a good chance to win a small amount. When you lose, you more than make up for the wins.

[soah]

You seem to be oblivious to the very basic gambling concept of Expected Value.

Let's say you start with $3000 and your opponent starts with $200, and you bully him around by constantly setting him all-in when you're a 2:1 dog.

1/3 (27/81) of the time he will lose the first hand and go home. You end with $3200.
2/9 (18/81) of the time he will win the first, lose the second, you end with $3200.
4/27 (12/81) of the time he will win the first two, lose the third, you end with $3200.
8/81 of the time he will win the first three, lose the fourth, you end with $3200.
16/81 of the time he will win all four times. Now he has gone from 200 -&gt; 400 -&gt; 800 -&gt; 1600 -&gt; 3200 and you end with $0.

So assuming that you will continue bullying him until one of you goes broke, at which point the game ends, you will make a $200 profit 65 times out of 81, and lose $3000 16 times out of 81. (65/81 x 200) + (16/81 x -3000) = 160 - 593 = -433

You lose an average of $433 to each person that you try to bully. So congratulations. You're one of the millions of fish that make the games good.

[joel2006]

pzhon,
You're missing my point, I'm not arguing that me setting you all-in is +EV for me (in the long run), my point is that if you don't have enough money, when I stack you, you're through and you and your +EV will be on the rail hugging your nuts. The problem with your reply is that it assumes that you have an infinite bankroll, if your SS is all of your money when I break you, you're done. You never get to the long run. This is why I stated earlier that it depends on how much money you have in your pocket, if your bankroll is as deep as my stack (or close) then you're fine, but if not I may be able to break you before you get to the long run. And in the real world you don't make money every time i set you in, theoretically you do, but while you're on the rail you certainly can't use that money you just 'made' to get back in the game. Also I wasn't saying that the 20x raise was to steal the blinds, it isn't. And the deep stacks aren't lessening their raising values, they're just playing regular poker. The other deep players will be calling or re-raising at the same level, since these raises are proportionate for their stacks, it's the 'normal stacks' and SS that will have problems. If there are 7 or 8 guys in a 10/20 game with 5x the max playing this way, it makes life hell for a person with only the table max. This is what Ed described in his Bellagio scenario. Since this guy only had $2000 he would have to get lucky in his first few hands he played or hug his nuts on the rail. His +EV would be useless to him if he had to spend his Vegas trip on the rail and that is why he stayed in Ed's limit game.

[joel2006]

Ed,
You are confusing my lack of agreement with a lack of understanding, I understand your arguement fully, I just don't agree with all of it. 'Argument by declaration' is where someone just declares something is so without any reasoning or verification, like an argument from authority.

"This is a big mistake on their part, and if they are indeed "setting short stacks in" before the flop with these hands, they will get destroyed by a table full of GSIH (perhaps slightly modified to account for the excessive action) short stack players. The extent to which they aren't getting hammered by doing this only shows how incompetant their opponents are."

They're not setting them in before the flop with these hands (that would be stupid), but rather calling SS raises with them and setting the SS in when they hit something better than TPTK. My point is that this kind of player will do these things to a SS, but not to a larger stack, who if it hits against him could cripple him.