Short Bankroll strategy

In a previous post about microstakes strategy, I had recommended that someone bring the minimum to the table to reduce variance when getting bad beats (as most players in microstakes play any two cards and the variance can be crushing on your bankroll). I believe that this is an essential strategy for playing on a short bankroll (which one is probably doing if you are playing microstakes like 1c-2c blinds) because you can't win back money lost on a bad beat if you do not have any money left in your account. In the previous post someone responded (I forget who) and said that this strategy was stupid. What do you guys think? Is this a legit strategy for those who are just starting out on short bankrolls? Please give me your opinions

If you cannot afford to bankroll yourself properly for a 1c 2c game for you money is probably so tight you shouldnt be gambling online at all!

Bankroll yourself properly and play a solid game. No game is 'too bad' to beat, people have and will contiue to crush these stakes. Always buy in full always reload otherwise you are letting your losses minimise your winnings etc. etc.

Its not that I cannot bankroll myself properly. I just like to have alot of buyins in my account (~20-30) and by bringing $2.50 the table instead of $5 If you have $50 in your account you now have 20 buyins as opposed to 10. Also, IMO if you are much better than the rest of the players at the table (which is almost always the case if you know anything about strategy at a low limit table) you should be looking to reduce the luck factor involved. If you bring less money to the table, it reduces the amount of money that they can beat you for in 1 hand and you can continue to beat them in small/medium pots when they call you down with trash and pick away at their stacks. And once you double up you can stack people with their own money. I guess I am a little risk-averse in this sense.

Originally Posted by Seasider

If you cannot afford to bankroll yourself properly for a 1c 2c game for you money is probably so tight you shouldnt be gambling online at all!

Bankroll yourself properly and play a solid game. No game is 'too bad' to beat, people have and will contiue to crush these stakes. Always buy in full always reload otherwise you are letting your losses minimise your winnings etc. etc.

agreed

crushed you want to have as much money on the table as possible(well enough to cover the other players), because some day soon you will flop the nuts and multiple players will go allin in and you only have 1/2 of there stacks covered

buying in short is extremely weak.

You can't set hunt (no implied odds), you can't bluff (you don't have enough money to push anyone off hands), and you can't make laydowns (you are always getting odds to call all in). You are basically just playing roulette.

Plus you will get stacked by me because I have an eternal vendetta against shortbuys, making it my duty to stack them at all costs.

Shorties are very easy to stack, cuz all you have to do is put them all in preflop with a good hand like AK or TT.

Who can't afford a bankroll for NL2 or NL5?

I bought in short in the past only b/c I felt I was a losing player, so I did it to protect myself. Ever since I felt I was winning player, I have always bought in full. And if I know my opponents will be playing "any two" and very randomly at it, I sure as hell buy in full. If they're idiots, you want to double up a full stack, not a half stack. If you're a winning player at your stake I really don't see any reason ever to buy in short.

The time I will be buying in short in the forseeable future will be when I move to a new site (maybe) to see how it plays first, although probably full right away. But I'll be probably be buying in half when I first move up to 50NL, but that is still some time ahead.

Originally Posted by Nova442

Who can't afford a bankroll for NL2 or NL5?

don't be such a snob

If you are better than the average player - I think you should always have the max buy-in for two reasons :

1. Maximize your profit with good hands.
2. You can control the pot better - nothing is worse than knowing an opponent is drawing but you don't have enough chips left to make him chase incorrectly.

I really don't think that luck is much of a factor in .01/.02 NL to worry about it. As long as you aren't donking away your chips, you will get paid off when you hit a good hand.

If you start with $50.00 and are losing at .01/.02 NL to the point of going broke - it's not because of bad beats.

Martin

Originally Posted by Renton

Originally Posted by Nova442

Who can't afford a bankroll for NL2 or NL5?

don't be such a snob

:P 40 bucks man, these days that's one tank of gas!

Everything said in this thread about not being able to maximize profits, control pot odds, and get implied odds when you're buying in short is true. For a beginner it might look tempting to buyin short so you don't lose full buyins while you're getting your "poker education". But since you're paying for it anyway, you might as well do it right so you become a winning player faster. And since you're trying to get to that level one of the most profitable plays you can make is set hunting with small pocket pairs. If you don't buyin full you don't have odds to call a preflop raise, hit your set, and destack Mr. Overpairs who can't get away from his hand.

So why would anyone, especially a beginner who wants to learn a feel for the game, give up one of the easiest, most profitable plays in low stakes NL? Stacking other players will make up for a lot of bad calls.

With PartyPoker offering 50$ free (plus 25$ more after 125 hands), you can play 5NL with 25 buyins for 50$. I have to agree with Seasider, if you can't afford like 40-50$ you shouldn't gamble on anything.

CrushedNuts having less money at the table would not decrease the luck factor, all that will happen is that your losses and wins will be smaller so you will lose less but also win less. If you are better than the other players you want to make sure you cover them so you can maximize your net profit. Short stack strategy can be very profitable at tables where there are lots of raises pf with marginal holdings so that you can get all or most of your money in with an edge pf with your good hands and not have to worry about making mistakes post flop. You will still have huge swings though if you tend to get multiple callers.

If you are playing in very loose games (lots of players to the flop) you have to realize that hand values go down and you have to make stronger hands for them to hold up. You will also win less at showdown but the times you do win you will get 4:1 or more on your money as compared to closer to 2:1 in tighter games so these games are highly beatable, you just have to be patient. If you cannot isolate with your big hands preflop then be willing to fold them when you get a lot of action on the flop and you haven't improved. If there is a lot of multiway pots you should try to make sets\straights\nut flushes cheaply and then get the guys who cant fold AA\KK to pay you off instead of the other way round.

Remember that the more players to the flop the stronger the hand you need to continue with after the flop.

here is my short stack story - I do NOT advocate it, but i used it with great success. I was playing at Full Tilt for a few months after clearing a Party bonus. I randomly checked my Party account and saw that they had given me $30 in bonus money - FREE - The only catch was that I had to play something like 300 raked hands - So I sat down at the 50c/$1 limit table and quickly realized that the pot had to hit $5 before it was even raked - So after sitting for an hour at the TIGHTEST AZZZ limit table i've ever seen, I decided to take the $30 to the 6max NL25 tables - Here is what i did - I bought in for $11.23 every time - 2 reasons, first I wanted it to look as though that was my entire account and people would give me no credit - 2nd, it was 1/3 of my BR but I figured, what the hell - it's free money, so i had nothing to lose - If I doubled it up, I would leave and do the same exact thing - I did this over and over (it helped that I had a nice run of cards and was running very well) - Well, within a week of this at about 1 or 2 hours per day I cleared the bonus and turned that $30 into $190 - By the time I had it up to about $75 or $80 I started buying in for $15.23 or $16.23 - NOW, what I find when i'm not playing with free money, is that playing with full buy ins brings self confidence and some more respect at the table - I play fairly loose and aggressive though, so I don't really want respect at a 25NL table - I want people thinking i'm a moron, because despite the fact that I play a lot of pots, I don't put a lot of money at risk unless i'm way ahead (or at least fairly sure i am - we all make incorrect reads sometimes). I play my best with a full buy in at NL25, but I have won using the shortstack play on a few different weeks.

So it can work - It takes the right player, and the right conditions though - 1 bonus of it that I really found is that instead of grinding and grinding and grinding, you can do a hit and run and maybe get a decent BR together. If your losing, always be willing to move down a level, but if your competent, you can beat NL25 with a bankroll of like 6 or 7 buyins (just my opinion - I know the BR guidelines are against this #) Just keep playing a level you do well at until you have proper bankroll - I don't think there is anything wrong with taking a shot though, even if your underbankrolled

Originally Posted by Renton

buying in short is extremely weak.

You can't set hunt (no implied odds), you can't bluff (you don't have enough money to push anyone off hands), and you can't make laydowns (you are always getting odds to call all in). You are basically just playing roulette.

If poker was a game of preflop, this site would be called...preflop.com??? Nah, that's lame, and so is the strategy.

If your bankroll is too small to be playing postflop, you need to move down in levels. There is a lot of $$ to be won for the right price by chasing nut flushes to the river with 5 people in the hand. The shorty strategy is good for players who don't know how to play postflop. I don't mind gambling up with them, but I sure as hell don't give them any respect as players.

Develop your game on the 1 cent 2 cent tables first. There, the stacks are 2.5X deeper than stacks at higher levels. It is the best possible way to practice postflop, and the most profitable way of playing, is to play postflop.

The shorty strategy is based on camping for a big hand then pushing all in for 20bb, HOPING for a call. Whereas with playing postflop, you can make 20bb+ bets on the flop, turn, and river.

(as most players in microstakes play any two cards and the variance can be crushing on your bankroll).

LOL? wtf?

(as most players in microstakes play way too many hands, play far too passively, take marginal hands way too far, and as a result, your variance should be quite small as opposed to your winrate, which should be astronomical.)

There we go, much better.

Originally Posted by Renton

Plus you will get stacked by me because I have an eternal vendetta against shortbuys, making it my duty to stack them at all costs.

Shorties are very easy to stack, cuz all you have to do is put them all in preflop with a good hand like AK or TT.

Heh, I'll admit that the vast majority of short stacked players out there are horrible. But short stacks do have an advantage at most tables, and your assertion that they are just 'playing roulette', is very wrong.

lukie is right. shortstacks have a huge advantage for many reasons. in fact, barry greenstein has even said, buying in short is something that makes playing the game much easier. Your decisions are easy and the opponent always has the difficult decision because he knows the short stack can potentially go all in at any moment.

That being said, it is still better to buy in for the full stack if you are a winning player at the current stakes for reasons renton mentioned earlier. If you are a winning player this is the way to go. If you are learning the game, buying in shortstack may not be such a bad idea.

Originally Posted by bigboy5540

Your decisions are easy and your opponent has his decisions made more complicated by the differenting effective stack sizes. For example, if most of the table is deep, he's gonna open with 56s, but if you re-raise he's suddenly in a very -EV spot but will probably gamble it up with you anyway.

FYP

Sometimes playing with a short stack keeps you from getting pushed off hands and leads opponents to avoid bluffing you out of a hand by overbetting the pot. I agree with the posts and see your points. The reason I used to do that is I was on a small bankroll recieved through a sponsorship and wanted to build it w/o risking a quarter of it at the table at once. Once I built my $20 up to 50 or so I started bringing the max. I just think playing short isn't quite as bad as some make it out to be

Poker is a game of descisions.


Each chip you have is a decision waiting to be made.

Buying in short reduces the number of descisions you have to make since you are allin preflop or on the flop. It also reduces the number of decisions your opponents have to make against you for the exact same reasons.

If you are better at making decisions than your opponents then you want to maximise the number of decisions you both are forced to make in a hand together. If you are worse then you want to minimise that number (or better move down in stakes).

Therefore, if you are a better player than the average then buy in full.

The other advantage of this is that you actually get to learn the game.