Making the transition from short to deep stack NL

[NiceCatch]

Small stacks make play complicated for the big stacks... there is always the fear that a big stack's raise before the flop will be called all-in by a small stack, which might be just big enough that the big stack can't call. What this does is take ALOT of flexibility away to raise before the flop. You are limited to only limping with stuff that you could normally raise preflop in the button or cutoff. This can severely limit aggressive strategies. Clearly this is more of a problem at short-handed tables (6max and fewer), since at longhanded tables these players get picked off very easily.

I think if you're going to play with a very short stack, you need to be dead-on with preflop reads. This is pretty difficult online... probably much easier at a B&M. That being said, you are putting much less capital at risk.

[Lawrence Ng]

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why would anyone buy in for less than the max number of chips? don't you want to have as much ammo as possible for when you hit a monster and get doubled up?

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Newer players who aren't comfortable making too many decisions usually buy in smaller stack. This way, it's harder to push them off a made hand, and it alleviates a lot of the heavy critical decision making for them. I play in live 5/10 NL games where lots of players buy in for only $300 - $500. Then I see them flop top set and get paid off by some other player who called them down with two pair. Sure they double up, but they would have made far more money had they bought in deep stack.

Another reason is that it does lower variance and if a player's bankroll is not as large as it should be, playing short stack is not a bad idea either, but does sacrifice a good chunk of EV.

Lawrence

[Skjonne]

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Hero in SB with A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]
Villain in MP with K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]4[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]
Flop A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]7[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]3[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]
Turn J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]
River 7[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]
Result - Hero wins pot 400BB

How do you like those implied odds?
[img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

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How do you like those [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]J's?

[Lawrence Ng]

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another way to add deception for your big pairs is to sometimes 3-bet pre-flop with hands likes 68s.

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For the $400 NL games up and up I would recommend doing this on occasion to mix things up, but in the SS I don't recommend this mainly because most players do not pay attention to your raising standards and often times the tables will break up since the poor players usually go bust and leave.

Re-raising with a suited connector and/or small pocket pair should only be done with position, but if there's another raise back to you then you have to look at how much of your stack it's costing you to see the flop and how much your opponent has left in their stack. Otherwise you won't have proper implied odds to be paid off well enough to make this play profitable.

Lawrence