Small Stack vs. Big Stack

[Beavis68]

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

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You obviously have no understanding of big bet poker games.

[OrangeKing]

A question the people favoring having large stacks:

We both have a bankroll of $2500. You buy into a NL game for $2500. I buy into the same game for $200. I will rebuy for another $200 if I bust.

Now, why does losing $200 hurt me more than you?

[pzhon]

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Thanks for this informative post. You mentioned some people find the Kelly Criterion too aggressive. Are there any commonly used alternatives?

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To be consistent, people can maximize their expected utility, where utility is some concave function of the bankroll (negative second derivative). Of course, people are not always consistent, but that's another issue.

Some people use a fractional Kelly system. (See this paper for some analysis.) If the Kelly Criterion says to bet x, they bet x/k for a fixed k. The linked paper mentions that the probability that you ever drop to a*original bankroll is a^(2k-1).

Instead of maximizing E(log(bankroll)), this corresponds to maximizing E(-1/bankroll^(k-1)). For k=2, it is half as valuable to double up as to avoid losing half of your bankroll.

[Sakuraba]

Wow, you actually did argue this point. Amazing.

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One is that by restricting your hand selection, it makes you very easy to read, they will all know exactly where you are

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This makes no sense. Assume I am a small stack with 50 BB. There is a 25BB raise in front of me. I just push all of my chips in. He knows I have a good hand, but that doesn't really help him. He can fold and I can win 25BB. Or he can call, and I probably have a little better EV with higher variance.


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Two is that although you will be a favorite against anyone of them, Your big pair will be a dog against the field, so one of them is likely to stack you.

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If I get multiple callers, my chance of winning the hand definately goes down. My expected value generally goes up though. I like things that make my expected value go up.

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And you will either rebuy or get up

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Obviously, if I lost this is true. I have no problem with rebuying. If you are saying that my entire bankroll is on the table (and covered), there is clearly a risk I will go bust. If your point has changed to, "You have a high chance of going bust in games you are significantly underbankrolled for", I completely agree with you. (Everyone else here will agree with you too. We all already knew this.) That is totally different than saying short stacks are at a disadvantage.

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In the case of Ed's example the guy would be getting up, but he wanted to play poker, not sit on the rail and count the theoretical money he made from his +EV play.

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I don't think this is really true either, but I am probably just nitpicking now. In Ed's example, the guy had 2000 for a min 600 buyin game. I think Ed was saying he should buy in for 600 (or something less than 2000). So, if he lost, he could still rebuy.

[frankford]

I a low limite 1/2$ player might make 1k over a month and his max buy in is 200$ but most times he is not going to get call on 150 to 200$ bet preflop or after flop if he has AA/KK/QQ they will fold most times.5/10$ min 200$ buy in will make more money with less decision making exp 3 bets ahead of you for 40$ each theres 135$ in pot ssgoes all in for say 150.$ your either going to win 135$ if other 3 fold or 465$ if they all call and you should have best starting i just dont think u will get that kind of vaule on lower limit. your starting with same amount chance of losing same amount but your getting paid much better ongood hands.

[sully4321]

In the short term, yes they do all essentially have $200. However, even if you double up, they "all essentially" will have $400. Then $800 and so on. The problem is that they can make you broke each and every hand, which you cannot do to them. Thus, the big stack has an unwritten advantage... especially in tournaments.

[Triumph36]

The entire point of this thread has been to show that 'going broke' to a properly bankrolled player is meaningless in a cash game. The big stack has no intristic advantage.

[Zeno]

I Wanna Be Sedated


Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go I wanna be sedated
Nothin' to do and no where to go-o-oh I wanna be sedated
Just get me to the airport put me on a plane
Hurry hurry hurry before I go insane
I can't control my fingers I can't control my brain
Oh no no no no no

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go....
Just put me in a wheelchair and put me on a plane
Hurry hurry hurry before I go insane
I can't control my fingers I can't control my brain
Oh no no no no no

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go I wanna be sedated
Nothin' to do and no where to go-o-o I wanna be sedated
Just put me in a wheelchair get me to the show
Hurry hurry hurry before I gotta go
I can't control my fingers I can't control my toes
Oh no no no no no

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go...
Just put me in a wheelchair...
Ba-ba-bamp-ba ba-ba-ba-bamp-ba I wanna be sedated
Ba-ba-bamp-ba ba-ba-ba-bamp-ba I wanna be sedated
Ba-ba-bamp-ba ba-ba-ba-bamp-ba I wanna be sedated
Ba-ba-bamp-ba ba-ba-ba-bamp-ba I wanna be sedated

-The Ramones

[jpg7n16]

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In the short term, yes they do all essentially have $200. However, even if you double up, they "all essentially" will have $400. Then $800 and so on. The problem is that they can make you broke each and every hand, which you cannot do to them. Thus, the big stack has an unwritten advantage... especially in tournaments.

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1) This discussion is about cash games
2) Ed's point (if I've understood correctly)is "who cares about going broke (losing the buy-in)? I'm tryin to earn money in the long run here. Yeah you can bust me out, but I can also make money easier when you try and bust me w/ a marginal hand and I have a great one. Your zeal for bullying me acutally causes you to put more money into a pot as an underdog. Keep it up!"

Thus the dilemma.... do you make enough when you successfully "bully" me off a marginal hand in the blinds that I was going to fold anyways to cover your loss when I catch a great hand and double up off you??

You see whereas you can potentially make me go broke every hand, you also have the potential to double me up. People are so scared of the former that they forget about the latter. (Plus the big stack can't double up off a short stack - sucker [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img] )

[Ed Miller]

Thank you all for answering this. I wanted to get a good debate going on this topic, and I think I did.

I'm pressing this (and I wrote GSIH NL section itself) because I think there is a very common and very damaging misunderstanding of how various stack sizes interact in NL cash games. In my opinion, the reality is a little counterintuitive, and that causes people to "fall off the logic train" somewhere. Nevertheless, I feel that the general position I've taken in this thread is 100% without question correct. That is, there really is no room to argue against me, as the only stuff I've said is derived directly from logic.

In any event, the answer to this question is not quite 100% ironclad because it requires you to make some assumptions about the players in the $1000+ stack game versus the players in the new game... but IMO any reasonable set of assumptions will lead you unfailingly to the same conclusion.

I think it's clearly better to play in the $1000+ stack game. The first question to ask is, "How did those guys get such large stacks?" Well, there are several explanations:

1. They play loosely and wildly, getting all-in against one another frequently. As players go broke, they rebuy, and there's more money on the table.

2. They've all been playing for a very long time. They wouldn't have to play so loosely or wildly to get that much money on the table if they've all been playing for 40 hours straight. But remember, the rake will act as a very strong force to bring the stacks down over time. It will remove something like $100/hour from the table. So even if they've played for 40 hours, they still need to have more than one rebuy per hour to get all that money on the table.

3. These guys with the big stacks have all been running really good, and they just keep busting the other three players who sit down again and again.

Scenario 1 suggests your players play badly, and that they will play particularly badly against a short, $200 stack. They will make big preflop raises and be quick to get their money in with all sorts of hands. If you just wait for a big pair with your $200, you'll have a big edge.

Scenario 2 suggests your opponents play a bit too loosely and wildly also, and that perhaps they are sleep deprived. Also not opponents to fear.

Scenario 3 suggests that your opponents might be saavy. But it's extremely unlikely for seven hardcore NL players to be sitting in the same game and all have $1,000+ stacks. That stuff doesn't happen unless it's a 2+2 convention and everyone has been running ridiculously good.

The first explantion is the most plausible by far. All it requires is a bunch of people willing to gamble for a while. Specifically, the third scenario is extremely unlikely. Not impossible, mind you, but unlikely. When evaluating the situation, you have to assume the far more likely scenario 1 than the very unlikely scenario 3.

So it's very reasonable to look at that table and assume that those players are far looser and wilder than average. Hence, you should want to play with them.

Furthermore, the $1,000 table allows you the possibility, if you double up twice quickly, to play deep stack NL with them. Since you expect to be a big favorite at the game, this should be a terrific situation for you. The new game affords no such possibility.

To address some of the arguments for the new game:

I think it's unreasonable to assume that all 7 players with big stacks are good players. If you walked up to a table with one or two players with $1,000+ stacks, they might be good. But with almost the whole table deep-stacked, something else almost has to be going on.

Chris Dow said that people gamble more freely with their initial $200 buy-in than they do with large stacks. Joel said that people gamble more freely with large stacks than with $200 stacks. Which is it? I'd say some people gamble more with short stacks, and some gamble more with large ones. But the effect isn't strong enough to make either stack size, by itself, better. But when you see a game with seven $1,000+ stacks, that's compelling evidence that THOSE PLAYERS are playing quite loosely.

Regarding the bankroll arguments... I specifically framed the question to eliminate all of those issues. I said that you care only about maximizing your winrate, that you'd rather make $100/hr for 2 hours than $50/hr for 5 hours. So that statement should have eliminated all the bankroll concerns completely.

But for those who are worried that that isn't "realistic": How many NL "grinders" come to work with only one buy-in? How many come with only two? When I was playing full-time, I never busted out once. I never once lost every dollar in my pocket. It isn't because I never ran bad... it's because I always had enough to keep me in the game.

If you are "grinding" and you choose to avoid a game of your normal stakes (i.e., you always play $2-$5 NL) because it's so wild that it might put you on the rail, I'd say you aren't carrying enough cash.

In any event, the $1,000+ stack game should give you the better prospects by a healthy margin. The way I framed the question (talking about winrate) it wouldn't matter at all if you had $200 or $1,000 in your pocket. You'd still pick the big stack game.