Small Stack vs. Big Stack

[trader77]

I didnt read any of the other posts except for yours. And I think you are absolutely correct. And I would have to assume that all the rooms that you have played are legal. In certain states that is not the case. Limits on buy ins become effectively insurance that you can only lose so much. If you were to factor the illeagal factor into your decision to sit down at table ie cops criminals, you would be grateful for a cap on buy ins. At a legitimate casino there is no excuse and i agree with you.

[Ed Miller]

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...bigger stacks played by better than average players allow more optimal play which allows for earning more money.

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I don't think there's any question that the all-around best NL player at a table is usually best served by having everyone covered.

[Ed Miller]

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Ed, I too disagree with your position on short stacks for the following reasons...

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Not to single you out, Joel, but your arguments are representative of the widespread ignorance and fuzzy thinking regarding NL cash games. I hope you take that in the best way possible.

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This isn't obvious simply because it isn't true. Although those chips cannot be bet against you (in this hand) they do give the big stack the ability to set you all-in for a broader range of reasons (for example, since your doubling through him will cause less damage to him than a bigger stack would, he may be much more willing to bluff at you) and with a broader range of hands, and this greatly complicates your reading of his hand.

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If you have a $200 stack and double through someone, it does them $200 worth of damage no matter how big their stack is. It doesn't do a bigger stack "less" damage than a smaller one... it does everyone the same amount of damage... $200. If someone decides to play more wildly simply because he's got $10,000 on the table instead of $400, and he perceives that $200 is "less damage" to him than it would be to a poorer player, that means only that it will be easier to part Mr. $10,000 from his money.

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The above is nonsense since the most difficult decision one has to make is for one's whole stack, and hand reading will be crucial in that decision. Thus if having a short stack makes you a target, then hand reading becomes more not less important. And if one is willing to lay down a big pair in these situations then one is susceptible to being bullied, and if one is too willing to call, then one is susceptible to being easily stacked by two pair and sets.

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Short stacks simplify decisions. In a $2-$5 blind game, a decision for your $1,000 stack might well be a difficult one. A decision for a $50 stack usually won't be. That's really the whole point. No one is "pushing you around" when your whole strategy is essentially to wait for a big pair and stick your $50 in no matter what.

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Not to mention the fact that there is a huge difference between istiing short stacked with four more buy-ins behind you and sitting with only one more. The shorter your money is the easier it will be for you to be pushed around.

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I fail to see how it's relevant how much money you have in your pocket when you come to the table. Martha Stewart comes to the table with a lot more money in her pocket than I do. Does that make me "easier to push around"? Does the simple fact that Stewart can afford to burn through a lot of money before she "feels" it make her a tough NL opponent?

Success in NL hold 'em is derived from your skills and decision-making, just as it is in limit. You seem to think otherwise, and you are simply wrong.

[Ed Miller]

I just wanted to clarify my last post.

First, it's obviously important to be adequately bankrolled, no matter what game you play. If $5,000 is all the money I have in the world, it would be somewhat foolish to buy into a $100-$200 blind NL game with it. But if I were to do such a foolish thing, I could play a short stack strategy for a positive expectation. That fact that I am poorly bankrolled doesn't put me at a disadvantage in the game... it merely makes me a favorite to go broke.

So, in that sense, you are better off with four buy-ins in your pocket than only one. You are more likely to go home broke if you came with only one buy-in. But your expectation while you play is unchanged.

The reaosn I'm making such a big deal about this is because I hear total BS all the time about NL games. I'll relate two such experiences.

1. I'm sitting in a $30-$60 limit game. The guy next to me is clearly very interested in making sure everyone knows what an excellent and knowledgable poker player he is. He starts muttering about how he hates limit and he only likes to play no limit. Then he starts whining about how he really wants to play some $10-$20 blind NL game across the room, but he only brought $2,000 and that isn't enough to play (the min buy-in for the game is $600). So he calls up some other clearly knowlegable player on his cell phone.

"Hey, so I'm sitting in this horrible $30-$60 game, and I really want to play NL. But the only game that I want to play is a $10-$20 blind game and I only brought $2,000. That's not enough to compete, is it? I'll just get killed, right?"

Pause

"Ya, that's what I thought. Those guys each have like $10,000 on the table. I won't even have a shot with only $2,000. Thanks a lot for confirming my suspicions. Guess I'll just have to languish in this limit game."

2. A guy went to the local cardroom to play some $200 max buy-in NL game. He intended to play because he felt he would be a favorite in the game. But when he got to the cardroom, he saw that most of the players had well over $1,000 in front of them. Seeing that he was so outchipped, and that he'd be a tiny stack compared to everyone else, he elected not to play the game.

"I'm good in a normal game, but I just throwing my money away if I buy-in against all those big stacks, right? If I can't compete, I figure it's better just to pass altogether."

[tylerdurden]

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I don't think there's any question that the all-around best NL player at a table is usually best served by having everyone covered.

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I think this is where Bluffthis is getting confused. In this scenario this player's advantage comes from him being the best player, not from having the biggest stack. Having the biggest stack is just a "force multiplier" - it only magnifies the advantage, but it can't *add* to your advantage (i.e. it can't turn a disadvantage into a positive advantage). That's why there's no *intrinsic* advantage to stack size.

[set57hike]

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[joel2006]

Bluff,
I did read ed's book (that's what i'm disagreeing with) and nothing he has said here has changed my mind, as he is only arguing by declaration and providing no reasoning for his arguments. I don't know how much NL Ed plays, but his arguments sound like theoretical limit arguments to me and don't reflect the reality of NL. Check out his response to my post where he says $200 is just $200, he must not play a lot of NL. If i'm at a 2/5 table with $2500, $200 does little to nothing to my stack (i still probably cover the table) whereas a $200 stack is playing for all his chips. Ed's comment about money in the pocket really makes no sense, since his book reasons that the short stacks do have a problem in tournaments because losing means getting knocked out, well if i'm a SS in a cash game and have no more money i'm in the same boat as a tourney player (and can be easily bullied), but if i have more buy-ins then being set-in isn't as much of a problem, since i'll just rebuy another SS. I grind 2/5 weekdays at the Borg in AC, and i know many players who if they get a big stack (more than 3x the max) will immediately start playing lots of hands and setting short stacks in with a wide range of hands like 67s or even Axs or Kxs, and they don't mind doubling you up once or twice because when they catch you, you get stacked. This is what i mean by "being hurt" It is almost impossible to read the BS hand in these cases and if you are forced to call then your 'stackability' goes way up. Not to mention that when they have a 'real' hand they really get paid. These players will often just run over the table, esp. if they win a few suckouts. Some of them will also increase whatever the 'standard' raise has been, say from $50 to $200 making it real tough for a SS to play any pairs under KK, since they are calling for all of their chips and have less of an idea where they are. This makes the whole 'tight with SS' strategy very difficult to play.

[DesertCat]

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If i'm at a 2/5 table with $2500, $200 does little to nothing to my stack (i still probably cover the table) whereas a $200 stack is playing for all his chips.

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If two players of equal abilities are in the game, and one has $2500 on the table and zero in his wallet, and the other has $200 on the table, and $2300 in his wallet, who has the edge? Big stack, small stack or neither?

[Ed Miller]

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I did read ed's book (that's what i'm disagreeing with) and nothing he has said here has changed my mind, as he is only arguing by declaration and providing no reasoning for his arguments.

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I don't quite know what "arguing by declaration" means, but what I'm saying is all just very basic math and logic. The fact is, there are logical fallacies all of your points where you disagree with me.

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I don't know how much NL Ed plays, but his arguments sound like theoretical limit arguments to me and don't reflect the reality of NL.

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To be quite honest, even if I'd never played NL before, I'd be 100% right on these issues. They are math and logic issues, not "reality of NL" issues (whatever those might be).

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Check out his response to my post where he says $200 is just $200, he must not play a lot of NL. If i'm at a 2/5 table with $2500, $200 does little to nothing to my stack (i still probably cover the table) whereas a $200 stack is playing for all his chips.

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This is a FALLACY. $200 might SEEM like less to you if you have $2,500 on the table, but $200 is always $200, no matter how many chips are on the table. If you lose $200, you've lost $200. It doesn't matter if it's your last $200, or if there's $20,000 more behind it. The result is exactly the same.

This is how tournaments differ from cash games (which you get wrong in the next paragraph). In a tournament, T200 isn't necessarily T200 because CHIPS CHANGE VALUE. The only value tournament chips have is as a tool to maneuver you into places in the prize structure. I think I explain this idea fairly clearly in GSIH.

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Ed's comment about money in the pocket really makes no sense, since his book reasons that the short stacks do have a problem in tournaments because losing means getting knocked out, well if i'm a SS in a cash game and have no more money i'm in the same boat as a tourney player (and can be easily bullied), but if i have more buy-ins then being set-in isn't as much of a problem, since i'll just rebuy another SS.

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Again, the reason short stacks are at a disadvantage in a tournament isn't because losing all your chips means that you will have to go home. It's for these reasons:

1. Chips change value. Generally speaking, each chip added to a stack contributes less marginal value. So T200 off my T400 stack is actually WORTH MORE in a very real way than T200 off your T20,000 stack.

In a cash game, everyone's $200 is worth exactly the same... $200. Best Buy isn't going to give you an extra iPod for your $200 just because you won it from some sap with a short stack.

2. In a tournament, you are FORCED TO PLAY UNTIL YOU ARE BROKE. That means that if you get a VERY short stack (like 2 or 3 times the big blind) you must play it. A very short stack IS a disadvantage because you don't make enough on your good hands to overcome the blinds.

In a cash game, you never have that problem, because you can add to your stack or pick up and cash out whenever you want.

Now if being short-stacked and poorly bankrolled means that you will start playing weak-tight instead of properly (which is essentially what you are arguing), then of course it's a disadvantage. But as long as you play correctly, which is very easy to do (and outlined in GSIH), you're fine.

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I grind 2/5 weekdays at the Borg in AC, and i know many players who if they get a big stack (more than 3x the max) will immediately start playing lots of hands and setting short stacks in with a wide range of hands like 67s or even Axs or Kxs, and they don't mind doubling you up once or twice because when they catch you, you get stacked.

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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.

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This is what i mean by "being hurt" It is almost impossible to read the BS hand in these cases and if you are forced to call then your 'stackability' goes way up. Not to mention that when they have a 'real' hand they really get paid. These players will often just run over the table, esp. if they win a few suckouts. Some of them will also increase whatever the 'standard' raise has been, say from $50 to $200 making it real tough for a SS to play any pairs under KK, since they are calling for all of their chips and have less of an idea where they are. This makes the whole 'tight with SS' strategy very difficult to play.

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I'm sorry Joel, but you have some major misconceptions regarding the game you "grind." Perhaps you won't ever believe me, but realize that failing to understand this stuff will do you harm in the long run.

Fortunately, NL is different from limit in that you can be successful without understanding this theoretical stuff if you read hands real well. So you may well win in your game if you play well, even getting all this stuff wrong. But if you understood it, you'd win even more.

Good luck. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Ed Miller]

You arrive at the Bellagio poker room with $1,000 in your pocket to play their $2-$4 blind $200 required buy-in NL game. The only allowed buy-in is $200, no more, no less. (I don't know if this is currently the baby NL game Bellagio spreads, but it was for a while.) If you fall below $100, you may buy an additional $200 (so if you have $50, you may rebuy to a $250 stack). If you fall between $100 and $200, you may buy back to exactly a $200 stack.

You are a significantly above average player in every important aspect of the game: hand selection, hand reading, psychology, etc. That is, you're basically a favorite in any NL game you play.

When you arrive, they are just starting a second game. But the first game has one seat open. The brush allows you to decide whether to play in the existing game or to take part in the new game.

You check out the first game... seven out of the nine players have more than $1000 in front of them (remember, their initial buy-in and all subsequent buy-ins are $200). You don't recognize any of the players though, and you don't have time to watch any hands being played.

Obviously, in the new game everyone will have exactly a $200 stack to start out.

Brush asks you which game you want. You are primarily interested in maximizing your winrate.. that is, you'd rather play a $100/hour game for 2 hours than a $50/hour game for 5 hours.

Which game should you choose and why?

A. The one with lots of $1,000 stacks

B. The new one with nothing but $200 stacks

C. You don't have enough information to make a preference. In other words, you might as well just flip a coin.

Now, say you have only one $200 buy-in in your pocket. Does your answer change, and if so, why? Remember, you care primarily about maximizing your winrate. It's no big deal if you lose all your money in 15 minutes... it's just important that your winrate is as high as it can be.