Negreanu's Folly?

[Vincent Lepore]

DN in his blog makes a statement that buying into a NLH game for more than the table has does not in itself give one an advantage. He says that buying in for the minimum makes your strategy decisions simple. He uses the following as an example:

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When you buy in to a game YOU have the choice to decide how difficult you want the game to be. If you buy in for the minimum, it makes the correct strategy very simply. If you buy in for the most, it will force you to make more difficult decisions. An example:

You raise to $30 with AA and get three callers. The flop comes 9c 6d 2s and you bet your last $50. That's a no brainer right? Well, what if you had $20,000 in front of you? You bet the $50 and a player raises you $200 more. Now what do you do? It's more difficult isn't it?


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Does anyone see a problem with this example? Sure your decision is simple when you have $50 left you move in. He seems to think from his comments that this someghow makes buying in short correct. I don't. I think it's a mistake. Let,s look at his flop and a modified flop (by me) similar to this, say 9c,6d,2d. Suppose in his example the first opponent has a T,9 and calls the $50 now the second player has an 7,8o. Isn't it correct for the second player to call? What if in the second example, the one I modified, everone folds to the $50 bet except the last player that has the Qd,Jd and decides to (correctly) call? In both examples Daniels opponents are getting the right price to call and are correctly calling. Winning Poker is about mistakes. Mistakes you don't make and mistakes your opponent does make. If in these examples Negreanu had a much bigger stack he could now make a bet big enough that it would be a mistake for any of opponents to call. And if he had a huge stack, larger than everyone elses, he could make a call with a draw a huge maistake on his opponents part. This is just a simple example of how being short stacked in live poker can be a disadvantage. It doesn't settle the issue of whether a huge stack in and of itself is an advantage that is true but it does show that being underfunded can be a mistake. Just because you simplify your strategy does not make it a winning strategy.

Opinions?

Vince